A study of the topographic images of Mars captured from the University of Arizona’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera (HiRISE)on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shattered the hopes that some captions of Martian ravines indicated the presence of pure liquid water.

According to the latest geological reviews on Mars’ surface, the planet is constantly under the action of strong winds, powerful enough to change the geological features. The question that still remains is: what are the odds of proving there is water on Mars too?

The lead author of the study, associate professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona Jon D. Pelletier, said what they believed to be a flow of liquid water turned out to be an avalanche of granular debris, which “rules out pure liquid water,” he said.

After comparing the physics of liquid under Martian conditions, Pelletier and his team concluded that the granular debris was what the images most probably indicated. And indeed, that means there was no flow of pure water, but still doesn’t completely rule out water’s existence on Mars.

The findings turned towards a dry granular avalanche, but at the same time didn’t exclude the possibility of a thick, muddy flow, containing at least 50-60 percent sediments. In other words, the muddy flow, similar to lava flow for example, looks very similar to a dry avalanche.

In 2006, a study made by Michael Malin and published in the journal Science said the images of the Martian surface taken in 1999 resembled two ravines, which suggested the presence of liquid water flows in the past decade.

Through the use of digital elevation models (DEM) and numerical computers, Pelletier’s team later conducted experiments to predict how those types of deposits in particular may have formed, making a comparison between traces left by a flow of pure water and traces left by a dry avalanche.

“This is the first time that anyone has applied numerical computer models to the bright deposits in gullies on Mars or to DEMs produced from HiRISE images,” Pelletier said. The testing will continue for similar deposits formed in less steep slopes, so as to establish the actual cause that led to their appearance.

Image credits: NASA