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Martian Clay Could Be Hiding the Planet's Atmosphere

We know that Mars was once a warmer, wetter world with a thicker atmosphere, but now it has 1% of the atmospheric density of Earth. Where did it all go? One theory is that billions of years of interaction with the solar wind have buffeted it off into space. New research suggests that the atmosphere might still be there, just bound up in the clay-covered material that forms the crust of Mars. Trickling water could have drawn CO2 out of the atmosphere and locked it away.

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