The mega tsunami that shook Mars 3.4 billion years ago with waves up to 250 meters high could have been caused by an asteroid like the Chicxulub one, which hit the Earth 66 million years ago marking the extinction of the dinosaurs: a to suggest it is the discovery on the red planet of a huge impact crater 110 kilometers wide which could have been caused precisely by the collision.
This is indicated by the simulations published in the Scientific Reports journal by an international group led by Alexis Rodriguez of the Planetary Science Institute of Tucson, in the United States.
Analyzing maps of the surface of Mars, created by combining images from previous missions to the planet, the researchers identified a particular impact crater they called Pohl: it is a circular structure with a diameter of 110 kilometers located inside a area of the northern plains that previous studies had suggested could be covered by an ocean about 120 meters deep.
Based on the age of its rocks, Pohl Crater may have formed about 3.4 billion years ago.
Simulations indicate that an impact structure like Pohl's could be caused by the impact of a nine-kilometre-diameter asteroid on compacted ground or a three-kilometer asteroid on more porous soil.
In both cases, the simulations have generated craters of 110 kilometers in diameter and mega tsunamis that have pushed up to 1,500 kilometers from the impact site, with waves up to 250 meters high (in the case of the three kilometer asteroid), consequences very similar to those caused by the impact of Chicxulub on Earth.