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Information - TP7 Mars Habitability: the Geophysical Approach
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Event Information |
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The study of other planets has told us how Earth is unique. Clearly, life, even if it formed elsewhere, has developed significantly only on Earth. Moreover, Earth presents a unique combination of geological characteristics: plate tectonics and a global magnetic field, an oxygen-rich atmosphere and a hydrosphere, and a satellite (the Moon) that stabilizes the obliquity and thus the climate. A habitable planet appears to be a complex and perhaps rare object. But how are geological evolution and habitability coupled? Will life interact with the host planet to make it all the more habitable? We may thus see life as a geologic process. On Mars, it may have once appeared, and eventually have lost the race against faster developing adverse geologic processes. For instance, early Mars is universally agreed to have had a warmer and wetter environment protected by a magnetic field. But the protecting field died before life had significantly evolved and the atmosphere was eroded and went into a negative greenhouse cycle that resulted in the cold desert planet we see today. One may thus envision Mars as a “paleo-habitable” planet. What are the links between geology and life? Have Mars been hosting life? If so, how long, and under which conditions, Mars was able to sustain life? There is deep need to understand how the geological evolution and habitability are coupled, and Mars offers a unique opportunity to investigate this crucial question on a second planet. Papers in the fields of Mars magnetism, internal dynamics, tectonism, volcanism, atmosphere, climate, paleoclimate, atmospheric escape, etc... are welcome, provided they put emphasis on Mars habitability.
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