Mars Once Hosted Lake Larger than Any on Earth: Lake Eridania

Aug 7, 2024 by News Staff

This new image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft shows Caralis Chaos, broken-down and dried-up remnants of a vast ancient Martian lake named Lake Eridania.



This image from ESA’s Mars Express shows Caralis Chaos, a Martian region where copious water is thought to have once existed in the form of an ancient lake known as Lake Eridania. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.


Lake Eridania once held more water than all other Martian lakes combined and covered an area of over a million km2.

The lake was larger than any known lake on Earth, containing enough water to fill the Caspian Sea nearly three times over.

It likely existed around 3.7 billion years ago, first as one large body of water and later as a series of smaller isolated lakes as it began to dry out.

Eventually Lake Eridania disappeared completely, along with the rest of the water on the Red Planet.

More:
https://www.sci.news/space/mars-lake-eridania-13157.html