For a long time there has been speculations if Mars could have contained some sort of life in its early history. That presumes that the climat was totally different. It has been claimed that one of the crucial factors to that thesis is a considerable densed atmosphere where oxygen is one of the content as bound or as free form.
Another important factor that has been claimed is that of the existence of water in liquid form in an amount enough to bare life.
And there are things that actually points in that direction - that there has been, in an early stage of the planets evolution, running water on the surface. What they mean is those cruising systems of furrows that sick-sack itself through the landscape and where even delta-looking structures can be sighted.
The question is if there is reason to belive that these conditions ever could have existed? The only thing we actually know is - how it looks today, an atmosphere with a pressure of only 0.6% of the earths and with a compond of 95% Carbondioxide and 0.2% oxygen. If water exists it's only in frozen state.
If we can find a scenario that talks in favor of water and atmosphere disapears during a planets lifecycle, then perhaps we easier can accept the possibility that Mars once could have had an atmosphere totally diffrent from today and maybe even bilogical life!
The big issue is if there is reason to belive that there once was an atmosphere on Mars that was thicker and contained a similar compond as earth, including liquid water in enough amount that has since then, in line with the planets cycle, has dissapeared or at least reduced dramaticly.
Scientist has come forward with a number of explanations to this and thesis are all debated.

(*Picture by Thomas Feiners (Feiner art))
One of the scenarios to explain this is that atmosphere could have "leaked" from the planet due to its low gravity. Another is that all the oxygene remains captured inside componds on the ground.
I'm not here to comment on those. Instead I will present a brand new (?) theory, that maybe could explain the thin atmosphere and the small amount of water (frozen state only) on Mars, and it goes as follows:

An almost certain development in a planets cycle is that it cools off more and more with age. This is a very long process and depends, among other things, partly to the size of the planet and the type of core-process that operates in its center.
The cooling is caused by that its lost of heat is bigger than what it recives. Because of its heat conducting ability within the planets mass is bigger than zero. It means that the surface will coagulate faster than its core.
As the surface has hardened it has built a sort of crust that covers the planet which get thicker and thicker as it start to deform. We can resemble it with the core of an apple that has dried out. The parable is the same. The volume of the mass has decreased. As to the apple, its caused by the vaporing liquid from the "meat" inside and for the planet its caused by decreasing temperature and therefor increasing volume.
The reason that the apple-peel is wrinkling (unöess its decreasing along with the core) is caused by its lack of strength as the core crumble itself and brings the peel along with it - inside along with the peels loss of plasticity to allow en fragmental deformation on baselevel (with other words - the peel deforms continuisly in a way that doesn't affect the surface).
In a similar way can we describe the deformationprocess that is active when a planets crust is derformed. As long as the crust can't take its own weight you can say that it's more or less "floats" on the mass underneath. - It's continously divided into parts that is pressed into eachother. Like earth who has very big "floating parts" where whole contonents are held together.
As the crust gets thicker it also increases its solidity and finaly reaches the stage where it can carry its own weight. So what happens then? Okey, following:
The core underneath will obviously continue to cool down, except it will cool down slower as the attachement to the crust, and by this also the heath conducter, gets less and less.
And finaly a gaszone between the crust and the nearby mass underneath is built. My point is that if the planets rotationaxis do not point directly to the planetsystem-star/sun, it will make the underneath mass to skärma av sig. That means that despite influence (in reasonable amount) of sunwind and other, the center-core will keep on being unattached to the crust.
If the mass underneath should crash against the crust, for an example caused by a larger piece "runs into" another, the risk is big that it might stuck to the "shell". This could cause a continuing asymethric in the planets center-core and center of gravity. If, and how, this influence the planet is hard to tell, but it might bring along the reaction of the rotation-axis will be "pushed" to ponit at the center of the system. Maybe this is whats have happened to our own Moon that got its mass in asymethric portions where its center (almost) points towards earth?!!
The gaspressure will be high at start, but will decrease as the inner core continously keeps cooling down.
If we presuppose that the planet has an atmosphere, this will finally slowly start to zip into this gaszone. The "zipping" inwards is caused by the processes mentioned above, but also through the cracks in the crust all the way down to the core and the gaszone.
In the same way water will start to find its way downwards and will start to fill the gaszone. Along witrh this scenario the planets surface will be drained of all its carrying gases (atmospeher) and liquid (water) and turns more and more sterile.
To decide a timeperiod to this developement shouldn't be hard with the help by data of the planets mass, size, temeparture a.s.o.
This development will speed up as the mass of the planets is less (smaller planet - faster development). If mars has that amount of mass and that it has already brought on this development is open for deabte, but as far as we know all visible geological activity on the surface has ceased and no seismographic activity has been traced (Wiking-shuttle '76) which indicates that the "shell" has become stabile and self-carrying.

If the scenario mentioned above should be correct, then Mars has come to the point where eventual atmosphere and water more or less is hiding inside its surface. This would make the possibility that a biuological worls once was developed and went under possible. But is the planet really doomed then? Actually it's possible that there could be an extrem change of organisms, who started to develope on Mars surface, to have kept on living inside the planet, feeding on that energy of glowing balls of magma that exists in its core!!
Think about thsi and spice it with the thought of that civilisations keeps failing and dissapears all the time. Perhaps they had enough skill to solve their survival!?
Did they, if we let the mind play a little, follow the atmosphere and water undernetah the crust or did they emigrate to another planet, and in that casae maybe earth?!
Is it remnants of a such civilisation that we can descarn in the pictures that was taken by the two Wiking-shuttles in the 70's? And to find the answer we must take a closer look at our closest neighbour!
USA has plans of sending a number of shuttles to Mars during the next years, where two of them will leave this year. With other words - there's a lot to look forward to if your curious.

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