Mars was a fully formed planet — crust and all — within just 20 million years of the solar system’s birth.
That rapid formation means the Red Planet probably got a 100-million-year jump on Earth in terms of habitability, new research suggests.
That’s just 20 million years after the disk of gas around the sun gave birth to the solar system’s planets.
The emergence of a planet’s outermost shell, or crust, is the final stage in the formation of terrestrial planets like Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury.
As the magma ocean cools and crystallizes, it forms a dense metallic core, and then an outer crust.
Simulations of the whole process takes suggest this occurs on timescales of 30 million to as long as 100 million years.
Mars also would have solidified about 100 million years before Earth did — giving the Red Planet a head start on habitability. »