Sun cleared in Mars’ water loss
From Times Wire Reports
Scientists trying to find out where all the water on Mars went have ruled out one suspect: The sun did not blow it away, new measurements show.
They measured ions -- charged particles -- being blown off the planet by the solar wind, itself a stream of charged particles, according to their report published Friday in the journal Science. Very little oxygen or carbon dioxide was blown off the planet during the year they measured it, according to the team at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in Toulouse, France. One other idea is that an asteroid or some other large object hit Mars in the distant past and knocked off its atmosphere and large bodies of water.
