A new investigation of clay-like material found on the Martian surface suggests the planet did not have free-flowing water on its surface.
For years, evidence that Mars once held flowing liquid water—a key ingredient for life—has been pouring in.
NASA's surveys have shown ice-locked water at the poles, visual evidence of valleys apparently carved by water millions of years ago, and clays which appear to have formed in free-flowing water.
But the new theory by authors at Caltech University and printed in Nature Geoscience, suggests the clay may have been formed by lava which—at a temperature of 1,500C—would have been much less hospitable to life.
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