Researchers think that billions of years ago, the planet Mars may have been covered by megacities.

In recent years, scientists have discovered evidence that there was once a fairly large amount of water on both the surface of Mars and beneath it. But that’s not all: According to a study published in the journal Nature this month, the formation of the surface of Mars in its current form was influenced by “megacities”. Moreover, it is likely that these events also led to climate change on the planet, which in turn significantly changes our perception of Mars.

Scientists at Cornell University and the California Institute of Technology, who participated in the study, believe that the formation of megacities led to a meteorite impact on the planet 4 billion years ago. According to a press release from Cornell University, the impact of the meteorite must have accumulated quite a large amount of heat on the planet, which led to the melting of ice reserves on Mars and the accumulation of large amounts of water vapor in the planet’s atmosphere. This resulted in the formation of hurricane clouds around the entire planet.

The researchers looked at the data of NASA’s Curiosity Rover (a car-sized wanderer on a mission to the red planet on NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, which is designed to detect Gail craters) and concluded that the impact of rock and dust on the surface of Mars “Megatskaldobes” should have been done. Water on the planet disappeared a long time ago, however, according to science, traces of floods indicate that at one time Mars was a favorable place for life.

“Early Mars was an extremely active planet from a geological point of view,” Alberto Feiren, an invited astrobiologist at Cornell University, said in a press release. “On the planet were exactly the conditions that are necessary for the existence of liquid water on its surface. And on Earth, where there is water, there is life.”