Thread: Is it possible Mars was another Earth?

The other day I was watching a show on the science channel and they made the statement that maybe close to a billion years ago Mars was an exact copy of earth. Some even said that when Mars lost its protective layers that bits of mars drifted off and landed on earth to create life here.

I'm more interested in the concept of Mars being another earth.

I wonder if this is true what could have destroyed the atmosphere?

If so? Could it happen here?

I know that I've seen extensive research that all of human existence would be erased mostly by nature in 1000 years. Clearly that be the result of mars nearly a billion years since that destruction.

Thoughts?

maybe not quite an exact copy of earth - after all, gravity was always substantially less, and volcanic activity would not have been so pronounced as on earth

my estimate is that after the first billion years atmospheric replenishment from volcanic activity would start losing out to loss from the upper atmosphere, and any sign of liquid water we see now may have been the result of subsurface ice liquifying from some subterranean activity

in short, although some geological processes known on earth may have been involved, that doesn't make it necessarily like a second earth

Let me clarify on this matter.

The NASA scientists on this special flat out believe that Mars was another earth. Another earth in the sense of water and atmosphere similar to our planet. Not necessarily life or anything like that.

yes, as far as atmosphere, water and maybe even the origin of life is concerned the early Mars may have resembled the earth

how long that resemblance lasted is a totally different matter, for the reasons i've already explained

maybe not quite an exact copy of earth - after all, gravity was always substantially less

maybe i'm wrong here. but the gravitational attraction of the planet would be due to it's mass...
so perhaps something happened causing a large decrease in the mass of mars meaning the gravity wouldn't always be the same.

Originally Posted by organic god

so perhaps something happened causing a large decrease in the mass of mars meaning the gravity wouldn't always be the same.

that's not impossible since the early solar system was a violent place, but i'm not sure if there's sufficient evidence to back up such a theory

Well I'm more concerned with the possible "another" earth. Even if for a shorter time. Shorter in a planets time frame of course. If it was that similar. I'd like to believe there might have been some form of life there. Would there have been enough time for that?

Originally Posted by Lightingbird

Would there have been enough time for that?

that, as they say, is the million dollar question
i'd be inclined to answer in the affirmative

Originally Posted by Lightingbird

Well I'm more concerned with the possible "another" earth. Even if for a shorter time. Shorter in a planets time frame of course. If it was that similar. I'd like to believe there might have been some form of life there. Would there have been enough time for that?

Probably yes. We'll hopefully have some clearer answers on that after the MSL rover does its thing. We've need another mission to actually find the remnants of life though. So we should know one way or the other in the next 20 years.

There is methane on Mars. Had it come from a cometary impact, it would have been gone in 200 years, so scientists believe there could be bacteria under the surface.