"Looks like Mars might have had more water than anyone previously imagined.
A sweeping orbital survey charted over 9,320 miles of riverbeds winding etched into Noachis Terra, a broad plateau in the planet’s southern highlands. Searching the fluvial sinuous ridges, also known as inverted channels, what they found suggests that the Red Planet
Each ridge of the plateau is believed to have begun as a channel of flowing water; today the hardened sediment stands tens of meters above the plain, a lithic negative of vanished rivers.
When water once coursed through these channels, sand and gravel settled onto the bed. Minerals bound the deposits into concrete-hard caps. Wind later scoured away softer surroundings, leaving the inverted relief that orbiters see today. Some ridges run for hundreds of kilometers without a break, while isolated fragments dot adjoining basins — clues that an entire drainage network once laced the landscape."
When water once coursed through these channels, sand and gravel settled onto the bed. Minerals bound the deposits into concrete-hard caps. Wind later scoured away softer surroundings, leaving the inverted relief that orbiters see today. Some ridges run for hundreds of kilometers without a break, while isolated fragments dot adjoining basins — clues that an entire drainage network once laced the landscape."
ZMEScience
