Water oceans on mars?, Images of different water oceans on mars based on MGS MOLA instrument. Options

[Guest_Magnus Lundstedt_*]

I have just completed a fun little afternoon project. I have long been looking for what an ocean on mars would look like for different amounts of water - preferably with a movie for many different ocean heights. So after not finding it ever, I did it myself today:

http://magnus.infidyne.com/mars/water/

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Interesting work!

But to be noted that, Mars having several well separated basins, the water level would not necessarily be the same everywhere, at least with few water. Fot instance it is likely that the northern bassin had water, at least temporarily, at a time where Helas basin (the deepest) had not.

[Guest_Magnus Lundstedt_*]

Interesting work!

But to be noted that, Mars having several well separated basins, the water level would not necessarily be the same everywhere, at least with few water. Fot instance it is likely that the northern bassin had water, at least temporarily, at a time where Helas basin (the deepest) had not.

Ah intresting. Do we know for sure that helas basin did not have any water in it, and that the northern basin had, or was that just an example? But that is certainly possible, since it did necessarily not rain over helas basin (like deserts on earth). I guess it is also possible it did not rain anywhere on mars in any significant amounts, etc..

While the best explanation for mars is probably that of an forever dry-planet, I wonder if this scenario would be reasonable;

Mars starts out with significant amounts of water ice, maybe in melted form due to much vulcanism in "embryonic-mars", or that it quickly turns to ice form - "a snowball mars". Then this water-ice boils away due to the low airpressure on mars (water sublimation). After some time the huge amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere increases airpressure significantly; thus allowing for oceans to stay liquid more stable for a longer time. Water vapor is also a powerful greenhouse gas afaik, so the weak sunshine from the young sun is enough to keep temperatures above 0 C. At this time some kind of equilibrium forms between the pressure in the air from water vapor and evaporation of the oceans. The water vapor in the atmosphere is also constantly outgassed in space because of mars low gravity + no magnetic field + solar winds, etc. ?

To compare the order of magnitudes between oceans and atmosphere on earth:

Mass of ocean: 1.4 × 10^21 kg
Mass of atmosphere: 5.1480 x 10^18 kg

(numbers from wikipedia)

So it would probably not be unthinkable that massive amounts of water (maybe in ice-form) on mars could generate a massive H20-rich atmosphere to allow for liquid oceans?

EDIT: I attatch an image of the phase diagram of water, with range now and a example range for what I talked about above: