Mars’ Small Mass Still Planetary Scientists Ask

Mars is still a real game, but not for the reasons most people might think. Of course, there is debate over whether it ever had surface water, oceans, and life. But the small mass of Mars relative to Earth and Venus has been a major problem that has plagued planetary scientists for decades.

As the mass of the red planet is only a tenth of that of the earth, it prompted the Carnegie Institution’s planetary expert, George Wetherill, to say that it is a ‘Mars’ problem. There have been several theories to try and explain why Mars ended up being much smaller than Earth and Venus. But when they are under severe pressure, few planetary scientists are willing to go there for any of them.

If there is enough material in the disk to grow something the size of Earth and Venus, it is not clear why there was not enough material around Mars so that it could grow to size, Matthew Clement, planet. scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab in Maryland, told me in an email.

Is Mars’ low mass the key to why the red planet can’t hold on to its water and eventually become unsettled?

Mass is the single most important property in the universe, Sean Raymond, an astronomer at the Bordeaux Astrophysical Laboratory in France, told me in an email.

He said that Mars’ geological history and water loss are both due to its abundance.

News of the Mass

It’s certainly a primary factor, along with its distance from the Sun, Stephen Kane, a planetary geophysicist at the University of California at Riverside, told me in an email. He said that the small size of Mars reduced the length of its geological life and the volcanic activity that filled the atmosphere. Its low mass also made it easier to be stripped from the atmosphere by the solar wind, Kane said.

Mars reached half its mass very early in the history of our planetary system.

In fact, regardless of whether the source of the size difference between the two planets had to exist before the history of the solar system, perhaps after only a few million years, the said Clement.

Why is Mars so different in mass than Earth?

There are three main theories as to why.

The so-called Grand Tack Model shows our earliest Jupiter moving inward toward the Sun before — somewhat like the motion of a boat — moving back out the other way. As we did so, young Jupiter disrupted the planet-building process that would have allowed Mars to form a larger, heavier planet.

Without Jupiter (and its transits), Mars could be the size of Venus and Earth, or even bigger, Kane said.

A lower version of the Main Asteroid Belt where Mars had very little material around it to grow massively.

The first model of instability in which the system of the first inner planets was such an orbital chaos that the structures of the rocky planets beyond the orbit of Earth and Venus were very worried that they can meet more than Mars.

In fact, each of these theories may have played a role in keeping Mars small. But it will probably take much more sampling of our solar system’s Main Asteroid Belt to identify which, if any, of these ideas hold great promise.

Why is solving this problem important?

The inner solar system has four very different planets, and we still don’t quite understand why, Clement said. Did something go wrong on Mars, he asked, or did something fortunately go right for Earth?

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Making Planets from Dust

Mars’ low mass is simply a product of how the Solar System turned dust into planets, Raymond said. Learning more about this process – both theoretical and continuing to observe the dust around young stars, where planets are being formed now – is the future, he said.

The Bottom Line?

The composition of our planets is relatively rare, especially because only about 10% of the stars in our sun have a cold Jupiter, Kane said. It is therefore possible that multiple systems would allow for the formation of more Venus-sized and Earth-sized planets than we see in the solar system, he said. This could be useful for astronomy since giant planets are rare, Kane said.

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