How Mars Can Help Us Understand ‘Marginal’ Exoplanets

This artist's illustration shows what Mars may have looked like billions of years ago when it had an ocean. It lost its ocean and its atmosphere, rendering it uninhabitable. The authors of new research describe it as on the edge of habitability, and say it can teach us a lot about the abundant rocky exoplanets we've discovered and their prospects for habitability. Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)

We’ve discovered large numbers of small rocky exoplanets, but they’re at such great distances that habitability is extremely difficult to determine. New research suggests than since Mars is on the edge of being habitable, studying it in detail can shed light on rocky exoplanets. If we can understand things like tectonic activity and atmospheric escape on Mars, we can understand how they may play out on rocky exoplanets.

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