If liquid water exists today on Mars, it may be too deep underground to detect with traditional methods used on Earth. But listening to earthquakes that occur on Mars -- or marsquakes -- could offer a new tool in the search, according to a team led by Penn State scientists.
When quakes rumble and move through aquifers deep underground, they produce electromagnetic signals. The researchers reported in the journal JGR Planets how those signals, if also produced on Mars, could identify water miles under the surface. The study may lay the groundwork for future analyses of data from Mars missions, according to Nolan Roth, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State and lead author.
"The scientific community has theories that Mars used to have oceans and that, over the course of 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."
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