'Marsquakes' To Help Reveal Liquid Water On Mars

If water is present on Mars now, it might be too far below the surface for conventional Earthly techniques to find. The discovery of water on Mars has always been just a far-fetched dream. However, now it can be a tantalizing possibility within our reach. According to a group of scientists at Penn State, listening to Marsquakes—Martian equivalents of earthquakes— can uncover the elusive secrets of liquid water on the Red Planet. Earthquakes generate electromagnetic waves when they rumble and travel across subterranean aquifers ~  If electromagnetic signals were generated on Mars, the researchers explained in the journal JGR Planets, they could be used to locate water miles below the planet's surface. Lead author and doctorate candidate in Penn State's Department of Geosciences Nolan Roth believes the study may set the stage for further analysis of data from Mars missions. Scientific breakthrough for new finding in Mars Surfaces (Source Of The Image: Google Images)  "The scientific community has theories that Mars used to have oceans and that, throughout its history, all that water went away," Roth said. "But there is evidence that some water is trapped somewhere in the subsurface. We just haven't been able to find it. The idea is, if we can find these electromagnetic signals, then we find water on Mars."Scientists can map the subsurface of Earth using instruments like ground-penetrating radar to locate water. However, the scientists noted that this technique is ineffective at depths of miles below the surface, where water may exist on Mars. Rather, they suggest a novel use of the seismoelectric approach, a more recent technique designed to define Earth's subsurface non-invasively. Electromagnetic fields are created when seismic waves from an earthquake travel through an underground aquifer due to variations in the movement of rocks and water. The researchers claim that these signals, which are audible to surface sensors, can provide details about the location, volume, depth, and chemical composition of aquifers. "If we listen to the marsquakes that are moving through the subsurface if they pass through water, they'll create these wonderful, unique signals of electromagnetic fields," Roth said. "These signals would be diagnostic of current, modern-day water on Mars." Utilizing this technique to locate active aquifers is difficult on Earth's water-rich surface since water is present below the surface even outside of aquifers, producing different electric signals as seismic waves pass through the Earth. According to the experts, accurate identification and characterization of the aquifers need the separation of their signals from this background noise. "On Mars, where the near-surface is certainly desiccated, no such separation is needed," said Tieyuan Zhu, associate professor of geosciences at Penn State and Roth's adviser and co-author. "In contrast to how seismoelectric signals often appear on Earth, Mars' surface naturally removes the noise and exposes useful data that allows us to characterize several aquifer properties." The message they want to give the community is there is this promising physical phenomenon — which received less attention in the past — that may have great potential for other planetary geophysics!