MAIN PAGE WORLD U.S. WEATHER ... ABOUT US CNN TV what's on show transcripts CNN Headline News CNN International ... askCNN EDITIONS CNN.com Asia CNN.com Europe set your edition Languages Time, Inc. Time.com People Fortune EW Giant flood channels uncovered on Mars Partially buried northwestern slope valleys (NSVs) could have raged with floodwater By Richard Stenger CNN (CNN) The largest valley system in the solar system, discovered underneath layers of hardened lava, ash and dust on Mars, could have delivered enough water to fill an ocean within a matter of weeks, according to scientists. Dwarfing anything on Earth, the flood channels were spotted by a satellite in Mars orbit that can peer with a laser instrument under the planet's surface. The network of gorges, situated in the Western Hemisphere between a giant volcano and the possible remnants of an ocean, is 10 times larger than its nearest rival on the red planet, according to the researchers. Cataclysmic floods that at times unleashed 50,000 times the flow of the Amazon River most likely formed the outflow system, which boasts individual channels as wide as 125 miles (200 km), the scientists said. "After picking the complex geologic picture apart like a jigsaw puzzle, we think there must have been several episodes of (volcanic) heating creating catastrophic floods," said James Dohm of the University of Arizona in Tucson this week. | |
|