{"id":10922,"date":"2025-02-28T14:08:34","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T12:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/?p=10922"},"modified":"2025-02-28T14:08:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T12:08:36","slug":"tracce-di-antiche-spiagge-su-marte-la-scoperta-del-rover-zhurong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/traces-of-ancient-beaches-on-mars-the-discovery-of-the-zhurong-rover\/","title":{"rendered":"Traces of ancient beaches on Mars: the discovery of the Zhurong rover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ancient sandy beaches, moulded by the incessant motion of the waves of a vast ocean that once covered Mars: this extraordinary testimony to the Red Planet's past has been identified about 10 metres deep in the Martian subsurface, thanks to data collected by the Chinese rover <strong>Zhurong<\/strong>, active between 2021 and 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The discovery, led by the\u2019<strong>University of California at Berkeley<\/strong> and published in the magazine <em>PNAS<\/em> of the US National Academy of Sciences, provides new evidence to support the hypothesis that Mars, billions of years ago, had a climate warm enough to host a liquid water ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Martian beaches: a possible cradle of life?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The identified beaches could represent a privileged site for searching for traces of ancient life forms. On Earth, in fact, similar environments have been fundamental to the origin of life, making these Martian areas of particular interest to scholars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The analysis was conducted by the team of <strong>Michael Manga<\/strong>, which examined the radar images provided by Zhurong. The rover was equipped with a radar capable of probing up to <strong>80 metres deep<\/strong>, technology similar to that used on Earth to locate underground structures such as pipes or tombs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Geological evidence of the ancient ocean<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Radar images show the presence of <strong>sediments arranged in a similar manner to those on land coasts<\/strong>, shaped by the movement of the waves. The particle sizes observed also match those typical of sea sand. On Earth, similar deposits take millions of years to form, suggesting that the Martian ocean has existed for an extended period and that rivers have carried sediment to its shores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cThe structures identified do not resemble dunes, impact craters or lava flows: that is why we think of an ocean.\u201d<\/em>, explains <strong>Manga<\/strong>. <em>\u201cThey are laid out parallel to what would have been the old shoreline and present both the right orientation and slope to support this hypothesis.\u201d<\/em>. This discovery represents a significant step in understanding the geological history of Mars and fuels interest in future missions dedicated to finding traces of life in the Martian subsurface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Antiche spiagge sabbiose, modellate dal moto incessante delle onde di un vasto oceano che un tempo ricopriva Marte: questa straordinaria testimonianza del passato del Pianeta Rosso \u00e8 stata individuata a circa 10 metri di profondit\u00e0 nel sottosuolo marziano, grazie ai dati raccolti dal rover cinese Zhurong, attivo tra il 2021 e il 2022. La scoperta, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":10923,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":44,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vita-nello-spazio"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10924,"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10922\/revisions\/10924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starbottle.space\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}