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Becky Ferreira, 1 December 2022.

Excerpt:

>A long time ago, a huge asteroid struck a watery planet in our solar system, sparking an enormous megatsunami that reached hundreds of feet into the air and left permanent traces on the landscape.

>You might be picturing the famous space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth, but scientists have now confirmed that the same story played out on Mars some 3.4 billion years ago, at a time when Mars hosted a huge ocean that might have hosted microbial life.

>After decades of speculation about this ancient extraterrestrial impact and megatsunami, researchers led by Alexis Rodriguez, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, have pinpointed the likely spot, called Pohl crater, where the asteroid collided with the Martian ocean at roughly 24,000 miles per hour.

>This key discovery suggests that Pohl crater, and its surrounding regions, could be important targets in the search for alien life, as they may bear “information on how the ocean’s habitability and possible life evolved,” according to a study published in Scientific Reports on Thursday.

>The team was also able to reconstruct some of the mind-boggling effects of this ancient impact and the subsequent megatsunami, which may have produced 800-foot-high waves.

> 

Alexis Rodriguez, in a call with Vice:

>“I think that we have two distinct and very interesting astrobiological targets that come out of this study,” Rodriguez said. “The first one is obviously the Viking 1 landing site because we have this controversy so it would be good to be able to resolve it.” The second, he added, are the remains of mud volcanoes in this huge dried-up ocean basin.

>“There is a possibility that this mud volcanism was driven by the release of seawater trapped in the sediments, or gasses connected to the evaporation of seawater, and obviously, that has very interesting astrobiological implications,” he concluded. “So, there are lots of targets to understand the evolution of the ocean of Mars, its potential biochemistry, and the way that the environment changed within the ocean over time.”

Scientific Reports, 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-18082-2

Perhaps there's vibraniun on Mars?

Impossible, there's on vibranium in Wakanda! 2.0

I don't understand why the presence of an enormous impact crater has any implications as to whether life exists or existed on Mars.

If life existed and an asteroid impact killed it all, that would have a big impact on how we search for signs on the ground there. Plus knowing that life evolved on not just Earth is a HUGE discovery for the potential of other planets in other solar systems maybe having life.

Anyone else read this to the tune of "The Day the Music Died"?

We're siingin'... Bye bye microbial life

Took my rover to the crater but the crater was dry…

They seem to be claiming that the Viking 1 probe landed on a site where a proposed mega tsunami from the impact hit, which would have deposited ocean sediment which contained evidence for life which they think explains the soil experiment results the Viking landers got.

Though I think this might be a bit far fetched given how long ago the impact must have been and how much weathering would have taken place since.

Yes, but the presence of an impact crater does not imply that there was life killed off by that impact or that life evolved somewhere other than earth.

So now we know it was an attack! Both sister planets were attacked but only earth made it. We will never forget our brothers and sisters lost on Mars.

That’s not what they’re saying.

It’s that a planet killer asteroid may have destroyed Mars’ atmosphere and turned it inhospitable to life. So if we do end up finding signs of even microbial life, we now have a fairly strong theory on why it didn’t survive.

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As I've heard it, we assumed it was something like this that potentially stripped the planet of much of its atmosphere.

I always wonder... If we dug like 90 meters below on Mars and Venus, would we find signs of life?

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Mars possibly, Venus mayby not? Venus seems to be volcanically active so perhaps it would be to destructive?. Might find something higher up in the atmosphere tho.

Funny really three planets in the habitable zone, one too hot one too cold and one just right.

Does knowing life evolved on earth not just mean the exact same thing? Knowing it happened on 2 planets is a bit arbitrary when we know it already happened on ours, unless people think we are the only planet out of billions/trillions+?

Dude stay safe.

We don't know the odds for life evolving, we only have a sample size of 1 currently. For all we know it's a 1 in a 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance.

If we found out that life evolved independently on another planet or moon in our solar system, then that means life is not so rare at all. That would mean the universe should be absolutely infested with life. And then the question would be "where is everybody"?

And there are various potential answers to that question.

Is that the one with the Von Trapp family escaping nazis?

Can I just take a moment to say how awesome it is that we live in times where “astrobiological” can be used in a serious scientific context, rather than mere science fiction?

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