Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: Lovelock

Impact Basins, and Kasting
Nick Hoffman — (archived)

Kasting is swinging towards a cold barren early mars these days, along with Toon, Colaprete etc.

As for major impacts - get your chronology straight. If major impacts evaporated early oceans, then the oceans predated the impact - right?

The biggest impact basins are Hellas, Isisis, Argyre, and some of the "buried" features in the northern plains. These are the ones most likely to have led to loss of oceans and conversion to a cold dry planet - right?

Those impact basins ALL predate the entire Noachian surface of Mars. They belong to a pre-Noachian or Hadean period of Mars' late assembly/early evolution. If the oceans were gone and the planet cold and dry by then, then everything we see on the surface, every crater, every volcano, every rock, every speck of dust. All post-date the loss of ocean.

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