Climate of Mars cold while those in the North are short and warm. It is now thought that ice accumulated when Mars' orbital tilt was very different from what it is now. (The axis the planet spins on has considerable "wobble," meaning its angle changes over time.) A few million years ago, the tilt of the axis of Mars was 45 degrees instead of its present 25 degrees. Its tilt, also called obliquity, varies greatly because its two tiny moons cannot stabilize it like our moon. Many features on Mars, especially in the Ismenius Lacus quadrangle, are thought to contain large amounts of
A Beautiful Planet does not have a planetary magnetic field. Consequently, "its atmosphere was ripped away from the planet by the solar wind. If you could stand on Mars today, you would find a landscape of lifeless desolation; very cold, and very dry." One of the current challenges in maintaining Earth's planetary "life support system" is global warming. The film shows how Earth's warming climate is causing the Greenland ice sheet to melt, and drives the point home by showing the Jakobshavn Glacier calving an incredibly large number of icebergs in relatively rapid succession as the end of this flowing river of ice