Since landing on Mars, Curiosity has already spotted possible signs of past life: Pebbles and rocks which are commonly associated with running water. This evidence shows that Mars once had an atmosphere with the potential to sustain and harbor life.
What happened to this atmosphere, and why is the Martian surface the desolate world that we know today?
One reason behind the lack of an atmospheric presence on Mars is because of“sputtering.” Like the other planets in our solar system, Mars is lashed by high-energy photons from the Sun. When one of these photons enters the atmosphere of a planet, it can crash into a molecule, knocking loose an electron and turning it into an ion. When these ions crash into other molecules over billions of years — which sends them in all directions into space — the atmosphere of Mars would have literally been stripped away.
During the early years of our solar system, when solar winds were more intense than they are today, that leads us to ask:
Why is Earth’s atmosphere still intact?
The answer to that question is because of our home’s powerful magnetic field generated within the core of our planet. This protective shield deflects many of the high-energy particles launched by the Sun.
To learn more about “sputtering” and to discover why planets such as Mars and Venus — both similar to Earth in many ways — can’t sustain life, please check out the following video from SpaceRip, a YouTube channel dedicated to space and astronomy videos.
Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC31pqk9sak
