so2 played key role in climate in early mars.

[alokmohan]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Sulfur dioxide (SO2) may have played a key role in the climate and geochemistry of early Mars, geoscientists at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggest in the Dec. 21 issue of the journal Science. Their hypothesis may resolve longstanding questions about evidence that the climate of the Red Planet was once much warmer than it is today. <br /><br />The Science paper's authors are Itay Halevy, a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences; Daniel Schrag, professor of earth and planetary sciences and environmental engineering at Harvard; and Maria Zuber, professor of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences at MIT. <br /><br />"There is abundant evidence for a warmer climate, perhaps even a liquid water ocean, early in Martian history, between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago," says Schrag, the paper's senior author. "However, scientists have found it difficult to reconcile this evidence with our understanding of how the climate system is regulated on Earth." <br /><br />Over millions of years, the Earth's climate has been controlled by the carbon cycle and its effect on carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. On Earth, there is a balance between carbon dioxide vented from volcanoes and chemical reactions with silicate rocks on the Earth's surface that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it to calcium carbonate, commonly known as limestone. Scientists believe that this balance has helped maintain Earth's habitability over the last 4 billion years. <br /><br />On Mars, there is not enough volcanic activity today to maintain this cycle. But this was not true some 4 billion years ago, when a giant volcanic complex called Tharsis erupted over tens to hundreds of millions of years -- and also a time when evidence suggests Mars had a much warmer climate. However, this carbon cycle on early Mars should have produced vast quantities of limestone like on Earth, and yet almost none has been

 

[Swampcat]

This is essentially the same report gunsandrockets presented in the thread Mars life based on sulfur cycle instead of carbon cycle?.<br /><br />The link you tried to add, after cutting off your cut-and-paste in the middle of a sentence, should read http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=24375.<br /><br />It would be useful if you read what you cut-and-paste before you post it <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" />. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="3" color="#ff9900"><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong><em>------------------------------------------------------------------- </em></strong></font></p><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong><em>"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."</em></strong></font></p><p><font size="1" color="#993300"><strong>Thomas Jefferson</strong></font></p></font> </div>

 

[alokmohan]

I take note.