Was Mars destroyed by nuclear weapons? Here’s what NASA really says

Mars is believed to have been once similar to Earth, with liquid oceans, lakes and rivers which could’ve been home to living organisms. For that reason, NASA has sent a number of probes to the Red Planet in search of signs of past life.

These ever more sophisticated vehicles laden with scientific equipment have made stunning discoveries. One of which showed that there was a much higher concentration of xenon-129 isotope than found on other planets in the solar system. That is except where nuclear fission has occurred, like the explosion of a thermonuclear bomb.

This prompted some to speculate that there may have been a nuclear war on Mars that destroyed a primitive civilization some 300 million years ago or more. However, NASA and others have found numerous natural sources for the abnormalities that have been offered as proof of a past interplanetary conflict.

Dr John Brandenburg’s theory that Mars got nuked

Dr John Brandenburg, a plasma physicist began espousing the idea that there had been at least one natural nuclear reactor on Mars, similar to one discovered in Gabon, after analyzing data from the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter. The NASA spacecraft had a gamma ray spectrometer on board and Brandenburg noticed that there was a large concentration of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium concentrated in two specific areas.

This theory later morphed into the idea that there had been two thermonuclear devices detonated on Mars in the distant past which was published in 2014 in a non-peer-reviewed publication. This was based on elevated ratios of xenon-129 isotope compared to xenon-132, roughly two and a half times greater, along with argon-40 present as much as 3,000 times more than argon-36 in the atmosphere.

These supposedly wiped out the early primitive civilizations known as Cydonians and Utopians based on the geographical locations near to where the atmospheric anomalies are located.

Proof that these ancient Martians existed was based on a picture taken during the Viking I mission 1976 in the Cydonia region known as the “Face on Mars”, which in that shot resembled a manmade megalithic structure.

NASA refutes theory and provides evidence that it’s a natural process on Mars

This and other supposed evidence that there was intelligent life on Mars like pyramids have been refuted and NASA explains that it is an optical illusion caused by the interaction of light and shadows with the Martian surface morphology.

Scientists at the US space agency also found evidence that the chemistry of materials in the Red Planet’s surface was playing a major role in the makeup of the atmosphere over time. Using the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument suite on the Curiosity rover they were able to collect extensive data about the gases xenon and krypton in Mars’ atmosphere.

In a paper published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters they explained that what is causing the observed abnormal ratio of isotopes is the result of neutron capture. Cosmic rays are penetrating the regolith and then striking an atom of barium or bromine causing them to lose some of their neutrons which are then transferred to the xenon or krypton, respectively.

These then find their way into the atmosphere which has lost much of its contents over the eons as the Red Planet doesn’t have a strong electromagnetic shield to protect it from the solar winds from the Sun. So over time, between 65% to 80% of atmospheric material has been stripped, lost to space forever.

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