IF ASTEROIDS crashing onto Earth created ideal conditions for life to evolve, as is sometimes argued, could they have done the same for life on Mars? Yes, they could, according to a study which shows that asteroid impacts on Mars could have created warm pockets of water that persisted for hundreds of thousands of years.
The Earth underwent a massive bombardment by asteroids about 3.9 to 4 billion years ago. During this period, impacts left the planet riddled with more than 20,000 craters 20 to 1000 kilometres wide. The energy of the impacts would have heated groundwater and forced it…
