More and more evidence of past, and perhaps present, water on Mars.
The new findings by the joint research team provide strong evidence that ragged, kilometre-high features on the planet's surface are actually the shorelines of the ancient seas.
Experts have debated the issue since the 1970s, when the Viking spacecraft located the features which seemed much like coastal formations on Earth...
On Earth, by comparison, similar shorelines remain relatively flat in comparison to sea level, casting doubt on the theory that the features marked the borders of an ancient ocean.
But Mitrovica argues that those dramatic topographical differences can be explained by the theory that the planet's spin axis shifted sometime in the past 2 to 3 billion years, deforming the shorelines and causing the geographic ups and downs.
A major shift of mass, possibly triggered by a volcanic eruption, caused the pole to wander about 50 degrees towards its current location, dramatically warping the topography and the ancient shorelines, he told CTV.ca.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070613/mars_study_070613/20070613?hub=TopStories
