In the latest edition of ‘Nature Geoscience’ an exclusive team of scientific researchers comprising of the doctoral student of James Kating, Ramses M. Ramirez and the Professor of Geosciences, Penn State, – Evan Pugh quoted that the green house effect that prevailed on Mars about 3.8 billion years ago might have been generated due to the existence of molecular form of hydrogen along with water and carbon dioxide.

This factor may have increased the temperatures high that allowed the formation of liquid water. They suggested that presence of hydrogen made the temperature warm enough to convert liquid water – the Nanedi Valles to flow across the Mars landscape like the Grand Canyon.

Greenhouse Gases

Ramirez along with a Ravi Kopparapu who is a researcher as well, co-developed together a one-dimensional climate model for exposing the presence of the gas that has been generated due to erupted activities of the volcanoes, which created the formation of hydrogen along with carbon dioxide to ignite a greenhouse effect that increased the temperatures considerably for liquid water.

Previously other researchers tried to solve the mystery by producing warm temperature using the climatic figures of water and carbon dioxide, but failed. Then they tried to prove the fact that with sufficient amount of hydrogen added to this formula of water and carbon dioxide there would have been produced a warmer surface temperature in Mars.

The above freezing temperature level had triggered flow of liquid water through the Martian landscape forming the Nanedi Valles, around 3.8 billion years ago. Ramirez said that the scientists have been putting their knowledge in to discovering the fact about the wet and warm climatic changes that has ended up in the formation of the valleys in Mars landscape. And this discovery might help in solving the mystery.

One alternate theory was that some meteorites might have bombarded the planet generating a steaming increase in the temperature level causing it to rain. But this mechanism has proved futile since large volumes of water can never be produced by this method.

Ramirez also added, “We think that there is no way to form the ancient valleys with any of the alternate cold early Mars models. However, the problem with selling a warm early Mars is that nobody had been able to put forth a feasible mechanism in the past three decades. So, we hope that our results will get people to reconsider their positions.”

The mantle of the Mars according to the evidence derived from the Chassigny, Nahkla and Shergotty meteorites proves the fact that it is much decreased than the earth’s mantle. The hydrogen green effect was thus generated due to the emission of gasses from the reduced mantle.

Ramirez finally added that the molecule hydrogen can be unchangeable and seems to be without active participation; however the other prevalent gaseous substances like carbon dioxide has transformed it in to a power packed greenhouse hydrogen gas. Thus hydrogen gas can be suggested as the ultimate solution that strongly solves the Martian mystery!