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Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Sport
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Tennis Briefing: Venus Williams returns and Canadian Open withdrawals
Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court. This week, a player who once declared he hated playing on clay wins his first title on the red stuff, there are more withdrawals ahead of the Canadian Open and all eyes will be on a 45-year-old Venus Williams as she competes for the first time since the 2024 Miami Open. If you'd like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, click here. Venus Williams returns after 16 months out Of all the players competing in tennis around the world this week, none will attract anything like the attention of an unranked veteran launching a comeback in Washington D.C. Venus Williams, who turned 45 last month and had been listed as inactive by the WTA after not playing an event for more than a year, is back. She will compete in both singles and doubles at the Citi D.C. Open, beginning in the latter today (Monday) with partner Hailey Baptiste, who at 23 is almost half her age. They'll take on 2014 Wimbledon singles finalist Eugenie Bouchard — who recently announced she'll retire, aged 31, at the Canadian Open starting next week in her homeland — and Clervie Ngounoue, who was just shy of two years old when Williams won the last of her seven Grand Slams at Wimbledon in 2008. Williams' return does not appear to be a one-tournament-only kind of thing. She has hired well-respected veteran coach Nick Saviano and seems to be targeting a run of events in the lead-up to the U.S. Open, which she won in 2000 and 2001. 'I definitely feel I'll play well. I'm still the same player. I'm a big hitter. This is my brand,' Williams said in a news conference Sunday. 'I'm just here for now, and who knows?' When asked why she had chosen to return in her mid-forties, Williams' answer was simple: 'Why not?' She plays her first singles match since that Miami Open 16 months ago on Tuesday, against world No.35 Peyton Stearns. Charlie Eccleshare The puzzle of playing on clay after Wimbledon For most on tour, the second half of a summer means the hard-court swing in North America. So how to make sense of this month's post-Wimbledon clay events around Europe in Gstaad, Bastad, Umag and Kitzbühel? That said, those tournaments have traditionally been an opportunity for Casper Ruud to rack up rankings points. The world No.12 doesn't care much for the grass, unless he is hitting golf balls along it. In the past, he has shown up at Wimbledon having not played any grass-court tennis but seen his favorite musical artist, The Weeknd, perform multiple times. That didn't happen this year, though. Ruud suffered a knee injury at the French Open in May after playing through pain for some time and chose to skip the grass season entirely. Then he lost in the quarterfinals of the EFG Swiss Open in Gstaad on Friday, to Juan Martin Cerundolo — aka the lesser and younger of the sport's two Cerundolo brothers, compared to 19th-ranked sibling Francisco, and the world No.81. Ruud is holding steady in the ATP table, thanks to his title win in Madrid in the run-up to Roland-Garros. He also doesn't have much in the way of points to defend for the rest of the season, other than reaching the last 16 at the U.S. Open in September and the semis of November's Tour Finals, if he can even make it there. Still, there have been years when Ruud has run the table on the summer clay. Hopefully his knee allows him to have some success on the hard courts the rest of the way. Matt Futterman Bublik wins on his least-favorite surface Alexander Bublik, who once declared 'I hate clay, I hate this surface,' has his first title on the red stuff, defeating Juan Manuel Cerundolo on Sunday in Gstaad. This apparent contradiction is entirely in keeping with Bublik's personality and follows him reaching a first-ever Grand Slam quarterfinal, also on his least-favorite surface, at the French Open last month. On grass, his favorite surface, he exited Wimbledon in the first round — though he did win the Halle Open on the green stuff in the lead-up to London. All in all, it's been a superb couple of months for the 28-year-old, who is up to No.30 in the rankings, having been No.76 as recently as early May. Bublik, Russian-born but now representing neighboring Kazakhstan, was close to quitting tennis altogether this time a year ago, when he struggled for motivation and lost his love for the sport. Now, he is one of the most dangerous players on the tour, having beaten even world No.1 Jannik Sinner en route to that Halle title last month. He has the all-court game to thrive anywhere, as he has belatedly shown this year, plus ferocious power to go with the feel and trick shots in his armory. Bublik hit 47 winners and made 39 unforced errors on Sunday, and afterwards praised his obdurate opponent, who off the back of reaching that final moves up 28 places to the aforementioned No.81 in the world. 'Juan, I told you at the net, this was not tennis. This was complete torturing,' Bublik said in his on-court interview as Cerundolo smiled alongside him. 'This is my sixth title, and I have played the greatest of the game, but this final I will remember as one of the toughest that I ever played.' Bublik is entered for the Generali Open in Kitzbühel, Austria, this week, before turning his attentions to the North American hard-court swing. Charlie Eccleshare Draper joins list of high-profile Canadian Open absentees The National Bank Open, better known as the Canadian Open, is still almost a week away, but it's already making some headlines for the wrong reasons — big names have been dropping out at a rate of knots. Last week, Aryna Sabalenka said she was going to take a pass after multiple deep runs on the clay and the grass, including the French Open final and the semis at Wimbledon. She's tired, and has every right to be, having contested 56 matches since January — more than a lot of players clock up all year. In recent days, Sinner, Novak Djokovic, Jack Draper and Carlos Alcaraz all said they'll skip Toronto and see everyone in Cincinnati in a couple of weeks. No surprise there from Djokovic, who ideally plays one lead-in tournament before a Grand Slam, if that, these days, as he tries to maintain his fitness before the grind of five-set tennis. Sinner's withdrawal is a little more surprising. He won this tournament the last time it was played in Toronto two years ago (in 2024, it was in Montreal). The women's event is there this time, having been in Toronto 12 months earlier. But the Italian is just over a week removed from winning Wimbledon and playing in Canada would likely require some hard training this week, which he may not be ready for, physically or mentally. Same goes for Alcaraz, who lost to Sinner in that Wimbledon final. The Spaniard arrived at the U.S. Open with an empty tank last August, still disappointed from his loss to Djokovic in the gold medal match at the Olympics three weeks earlier. He then lost his temper as he was beaten in his first match in Cincinnati before going out in the second round in New York against Botic van de Zandschulp. The reasoning was simple — too much tennis. Draper, who lost in round two on home turf at Wimbledon, has withdrawn from Toronto and also Cincinnati because of an arm injury. He has said all season that maintaining his health throughout it is his top priority. Add it all up, though, and some of the biggest players are sending a clear message: the tennis calendar in its current form, combined with the physicality of the modern game, is unsustainable. Matt Futterman 🏆 The winners of the week 🎾 ATP 🏆 Denis Shapovalov def. Aleksandar Kovacevic 6-4, 6-2 to win the Mifel Open (250) in Los Cabos, Mexico. It is the Canadian's fourth tour-level title.🏆 Alexander Bublik def. Juan Manuel Cerundolo 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 to win the Swiss Open (250) in Gstaad, Switzerland. The 28-year-old was competing in his first final on clay.🏆 Luciano Darderi def. Jesper de Jong 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 to win the Nordea Open (250) in Bastad, Sweden. The sixth seed clinched his third tour-level title. 🎾 WTA 🏆 Lois Boisson def. Anna Bondar 7-5, 6-3 to win the Hamburg Open (250) in Hamburg, Germany. It is the 2025 French Open semifinalist's first tour-level title.🏆 Irina-Camelia Begu def. Jil Teichmann 6-0, 7-5 to win the Iasi Open (250) in Iasi, Romania. The seventh seed ended a three-year title drought on home soil. 📈📉 On the rise / Down the line 📈 Irina-Camelia Begu is the highest climber of the week on the WTA tour, moving 28 places to No. 82 in the world after her triumph in Romania.📈 Elena Rybakina ascends one place from No. 13 to No. 12 despite only reaching the last 32 at Wimbledon.📈 Denis Shapovalov rises four places to No.30 after his win in Mexico. 📉 Alexandra Eala falls out of the top 60, dropping 13 places from No. 56 to No. 69.📉 Pedro Martinez drops out of the top 50, falling 15 places from No. 47 to No. 62.📉 Arthur Fils is out of the top 20, tumbling six spots to No. 21. 📅 Coming up 🎾 ATP 📍Washington, D.C.: Citi D.C. Open (500) featuring Taylor Fritz, Holger Rune, Daniil Medvedev and Ben Shelton.📍Kitzbühel, Austria: Austrian Kitzbühel Open (250) featuring Alexander Bublik, Roberto Bautista Agut, Marton Fucsovics and Alexander Shevchenko.📍Umag, Croatia: Croatia Open Umag (250) featuring Pierre-Hugues Herbert, Tseng Chun-hsin, Titouan Droguet and Stan Wawrinka. 📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV 🎾 WTA 📍Washington, D.C.: Citi D.C. Open (500) featuring Venus Williams, Jessica Pegula, Elena Rybakina and Emma Raducanu.📍Prague, Czech Republic: Prague Open (250) featuring Harriet Dart, Ann Li, Anastasia Gasanova and Alycia Parks. 📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men's and women's tours continue. This article originally appeared in The Athletic. Tennis, Women's Tennis 2025 The Athletic Media Company
New York Times
4 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Tennis Briefing: Venus Williams returns and Canadian Open withdrawals
Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court. This week, a player who once declared he hated playing on clay wins his first title on the red stuff, there are more withdrawals ahead of the Canadian Open and all eyes will be on a 45-year-old Venus Williams as she competes for the first time since the 2024 Miami Open. If you'd like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, click here. Of all the players competing in tennis around the world this week, none will attract anything like the attention of an unranked veteran launching a comeback in Washington D.C. Venus Williams, who turned 45 last month and had been listed as inactive by the WTA after not playing an event for more than a year, is back. Advertisement She will compete in both singles and doubles at the Citi D.C. Open, beginning in the latter today (Monday) with partner Hailey Baptiste, who at 23 is almost half her age. They'll take on 2014 Wimbledon singles finalist Eugenie Bouchard — who recently announced she'll retire, aged 31, at the Canadian Open starting next week in her homeland — and Clervie Ngounoue, who was just shy of two years old when Williams won the last of her seven Grand Slams at Wimbledon in 2008. Williams' return does not appear to be a one-tournament-only kind of thing. She has hired well-respected veteran coach Nick Saviano and seems to be targeting a run of events in the lead-up to the U.S. Open, which she won in 2000 and 2001. 'I definitely feel I'll play well. I'm still the same player. I'm a big hitter. This is my brand,' Williams said in a news conference Sunday. 'I'm just here for now, and who knows?' When asked why she had chosen to return in her mid-forties, Williams' answer was simple: 'Why not?' She plays her first singles match since that Miami Open 16 months ago on Tuesday, against world No.35 Peyton Stearns. Charlie Eccleshare For most on tour, the second half of a summer means the hard-court swing in North America. So how to make sense of this month's post-Wimbledon clay events around Europe in Gstaad, Bastad, Umag and Kitzbühel? That said, those tournaments have traditionally been an opportunity for Casper Ruud to rack up rankings points. The world No.12 doesn't care much for the grass, unless he is hitting golf balls along it. In the past, he has shown up at Wimbledon having not played any grass-court tennis but seen his favorite musical artist, The Weeknd, perform multiple times. That didn't happen this year, though. Ruud suffered a knee injury at the French Open in May after playing through pain for some time and chose to skip the grass season entirely. Then he lost in the quarterfinals of the EFG Swiss Open in Gstaad on Friday, to Juan Martin Cerundolo — aka the lesser and younger of the sport's two Cerundolo brothers, compared to 19th-ranked sibling Francisco, and the world No.81. Advertisement Ruud is holding steady in the ATP table, thanks to his title win in Madrid in the run-up to Roland-Garros. He also doesn't have much in the way of points to defend for the rest of the season, other than reaching the last 16 at the U.S. Open in September and the semis of November's Tour Finals, if he can even make it there. Still, there have been years when Ruud has run the table on the summer clay. Hopefully his knee allows him to have some success on the hard courts the rest of the way. Matt Futterman Alexander Bublik, who once declared 'I hate clay, I hate this surface,' has his first title on the red stuff, defeating Juan Manuel Cerundolo on Sunday in Gstaad. This apparent contradiction is entirely in keeping with Bublik's personality and follows him reaching a first-ever Grand Slam quarterfinal, also on his least-favorite surface, at the French Open last month. On grass, his favorite surface, he exited Wimbledon in the first round — though he did win the Halle Open on the green stuff in the lead-up to London. All in all, it's been a superb couple of months for the 28-year-old, who is up to No.30 in the rankings, having been No.76 as recently as early May. Bublik, Russian-born but now representing neighboring Kazakhstan, was close to quitting tennis altogether this time a year ago, when he struggled for motivation and lost his love for the sport. Now, he is one of the most dangerous players on the tour, having beaten even world No.1 Jannik Sinner en route to that Halle title last month. He has the all-court game to thrive anywhere, as he has belatedly shown this year, plus ferocious power to go with the feel and trick shots in his armory. Bublik hit 47 winners and made 39 unforced errors on Sunday, and afterwards praised his obdurate opponent, who off the back of reaching that final moves up 28 places to the aforementioned No.81 in the world. Advertisement 'Juan, I told you at the net, this was not tennis. This was complete torturing,' Bublik said in his on-court interview as Cerundolo smiled alongside him. 'This is my sixth title, and I have played the greatest of the game, but this final I will remember as one of the toughest that I ever played.' Bublik is entered for the Generali Open in Kitzbühel, Austria, this week, before turning his attentions to the North American hard-court swing. Charlie Eccleshare The National Bank Open, better known as the Canadian Open, is still almost a week away, but it's already making some headlines for the wrong reasons — big names have been dropping out at a rate of knots. Last week, Aryna Sabalenka said she was going to take a pass after multiple deep runs on the clay and the grass, including the French Open final and the semis at Wimbledon. She's tired, and has every right to be, having contested 56 matches since January — more than a lot of players clock up all year. In recent days, Sinner, Novak Djokovic, Jack Draper and Carlos Alcaraz all said they'll skip Toronto and see everyone in Cincinnati in a couple of weeks. No surprise there from Djokovic, who ideally plays one lead-in tournament before a Grand Slam, if that, these days, as he tries to maintain his fitness before the grind of five-set tennis. Sinner's withdrawal is a little more surprising. He won this tournament the last time it was played in Toronto two years ago (in 2024, it was in Montreal). The women's event is there this time, having been in Toronto 12 months earlier. But the Italian is just over a week removed from winning Wimbledon and playing in Canada would likely require some hard training this week, which he may not be ready for, physically or mentally. Same goes for Alcaraz, who lost to Sinner in that Wimbledon final. The Spaniard arrived at the U.S. Open with an empty tank last August, still disappointed from his loss to Djokovic in the gold medal match at the Olympics three weeks earlier. He then lost his temper as he was beaten in his first match in Cincinnati before going out in the second round in New York against Botic van de Zandschulp. The reasoning was simple — too much tennis. Advertisement Draper, who lost in round two on home turf at Wimbledon, has withdrawn from Toronto and also Cincinnati because of an arm injury. He has said all season that maintaining his health throughout it is his top priority. Add it all up, though, and some of the biggest players are sending a clear message: the tennis calendar in its current form, combined with the physicality of the modern game, is unsustainable. Matt Futterman 🎾 ATP 🏆 Denis Shapovalov def. Aleksandar Kovacevic 6-4, 6-2 to win the Mifel Open (250) in Los Cabos, Mexico. It is the Canadian's fourth tour-level title. 🏆 Alexander Bublik def. Juan Manuel Cerundolo 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 to win the Swiss Open (250) in Gstaad, Switzerland. The 28-year-old was competing in his first final on clay. 🏆 Luciano Darderi def. Jesper de Jong 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 to win the Nordea Open (250) in Bastad, Sweden. The sixth seed clinched his third tour-level title. 🎾 WTA 🏆 Lois Boisson def. Anna Bondar 7-5, 6-3 to win the Hamburg Open (250) in Hamburg, Germany. It is the 2025 French Open semifinalist's first tour-level title. 🏆 Irina-Camelia Begu def. Jil Teichmann 6-0, 7-5 to win the Iasi Open (250) in Iasi, Romania. The seventh seed ended a three-year title drought on home soil. 📈 Irina-Camelia Begu is the highest climber of the week on the WTA tour, moving 28 places to No. 82 in the world after her triumph in Romania. 📈 Elena Rybakina ascends one place from No. 13 to No. 12 despite only reaching the last 32 at Wimbledon. 📈 Denis Shapovalov rises four places to No.30 after his win in Mexico. 📉 Alexandra Eala falls out of the top 60, dropping 13 places from No. 56 to No. 69. 📉 Pedro Martinez drops out of the top 50, falling 15 places from No. 47 to No. 62. 📉 Arthur Fils is out of the top 20, tumbling six spots to No. 21. 🎾 ATP 📍Washington, D.C.: Citi D.C. Open (500) featuring Taylor Fritz, Holger Rune, Daniil Medvedev and Ben Shelton. 📍Kitzbühel, Austria: Austrian Kitzbühel Open (250) featuring Alexander Bublik, Roberto Bautista Agut, Marton Fucsovics and Alexander Shevchenko. 📍Umag, Croatia: Croatia Open Umag (250) featuring Pierre-Hugues Herbert, Tseng Chun-hsin, Titouan Droguet and Stan Wawrinka. Advertisement 📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV 🎾 WTA 📍Washington, D.C.: Citi D.C. Open (500) featuring Venus Williams, Jessica Pegula, Elena Rybakina and Emma Raducanu. 📍Prague, Czech Republic: Prague Open (250) featuring Harriet Dart, Ann Li, Anastasia Gasanova and Alycia Parks. 📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men's and women's tours continue.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
France's Boisson wins maiden WTA title in Hamburg
French number one Lois Boisson battled to her first WTA title on clay in Hamburg on Sunday with a straight sets win over Hungary's Anna Bondar. A surprise Roland Garros semi-finalist last month, Boisson won 7-5, 6-3 to give France a first success on the WTA circuit since Caroline Garcia at the season-ending Tour Finals in November 2022. "This is the first time I've given a (tournament winner's) speech, so please bear with me," the 22-year-old said before offering a simple "Danke" ("Thank you") to the German crowd. Fifth seed Boisson rallied from 5-2 down in the first set and survived a break in the second. Boisson hit headlines last month when as a wild card in her Grand Slam main-draw debut and ranked 361st in the world she reached the French Open last four before being beaten by eventual winner Coco Gauff. Boisson, now ranked 63rd and set to join the top 50 on Monday, lost her first qualifying match on grass at Wimbledon, but back on her favoured surface clay returned to winning ways. Bondar, ranked 77, had got off to a flying start with a double-break for 4-0. The Hungarian served for the set at 5-2, but was unable to close in that game, and Boisson took full advantage. The Frenchwoman wrapped up her first-set comeback with another break, winning the last five games in a row. At the start of the second set, Bondar, who won the final on this same court last year when the tournament was not yet a WTA 250 event, broke serve. But Boisson erased the break with a dropshot winner to earn a love break and pull back on serve at 3-3. She dug deep to break for 5-3, staving off a break point in the last game and grabbed her first WTA title. jde/ea/iwd/bsp
Times
10-07-2025
- Sport
- Times
Iga Swiatek, the Queen of clay, finds her feet on grass with Bencic demolition
Iga Swiatek's movement on clay has long been an artform (James Gheerbrant writes). Videos often go viral which show, in glorious slow motion, her incredible knack for sliding on the red dirt, the way she can launch herself into these amazingly controlled movements of balletic balance and superhuman flexion. On grass, where for years she has struggled, the problem wasn't that she couldn't slide. As she explained this week, it was that when she did, she felt like she was never going to stop. At last year's Wimbledon, she arrived as the top seed and world No1 and looked as helpless as ever on the lawns of the All England Club, losing to the unseeded Yulia Putintseva in the third round. Then she went to Paris for the Olympics and lost at Roland Garros, where she had previously been almost unbeatable, to Qinwen Zheng. She began to fall down the rankings, from first to as low as eighth. In Miami in March, she lost to the world No120. She went 12 months without winning a tournament. Chris Evert said she'd lost her aura. Swiatek called this her 'worst season of the decade'. And in her private moments of doubt, she must have wondered if the slide would ever stop. But if you've ever seen one of these videos, you'll know that the really cool thing about a Swiatek slide is how she gets out of it. The way that, just when you think she's about to crash into some poor ballboy, she puts on the brakes, splays her legs so deeply that her knees almost touch the ground, and in one fluid move turns her whole body through 180 degrees and segues into a sprint in the opposite direction. Never, though, has she executed a more spectacular volte-face than she has pulled off this fortnight. At a low point in her career, on her least favourite surface, Swiatek now stands just one match from glory. She will take on Amanda Anisimova on Saturday, bidding to become only the eighth woman to win a grand-slam title on all three surfaces. In her press conference, she admitted that that goal had never even entered her thinking: she felt her grass-court game was so bad that it never even occurred to her as a possibility. Reaching the final in Bad Homburg before this tournament, her first on grass, gave her belief: even though she lost to Jessica Pegula, she said, through tears: 'This shows there is hope for me on grass.' (Pegula replied, with some prescience, 'Trust me, you can play pretty good on grass.') Now, remarkably, Swiatek will go into her first Wimbledon final as a strong favourite, having demolished Belinda Bencic for the loss of just two games: the most one-sided grand-slam semi-final for eight years. Swiatek broke in the second game, a heavy backhand into the corner setting up a simple putaway, and from then on the match was only going one way. She set the second set on the same course by breaking in the second game again, with a magnificent forehand return right onto the line. 'Today was just a different level from Iga,' Bencic said. 'She didn't let me in the match for one second.' It was a measure of the quality of Swiatek's performance that the vanquished Bencic finished with 11 winners to just eight unforced errors: she played a decent match, but came up against Swiatek in that mode where there's nothing you can do against her. She's not the first: incredibly, this was the sixth time in Swiatek's career that she has won a grand-slam final, semi-final or quarter-final for the loss of three games or fewer. Bencic, who gave birth to her daughter in April last year and began the year ranked 489th, has had a brilliant tournament, and will return to the top 20. There may yet be more grand-slam opportunities in her future. For Swiatek, one awaits which she never thought she'd have, in a place where she has finally found her feet. Women's singles finalSaturday, 4pmTV BBC
Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Could signs of Mars life be hidden in its thick layers of clay?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The thick, mineral-rich layers of clay found on Mars suggest that the Red Planet harbored potentially life-hosting environments for long stretches in the ancient past, a new study suggests. Clays need liquid water to form. These layers are hundreds of feet thick and are thought to have formed roughly 3.7 billion years ago, under warmer and wetter conditions than currently prevail on Mars. "These areas have a lot of water but not a lot of topographic uplift, so they're very stable," study co-author Rhianna Moore, who conducted the research as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas' Jackson School of Geosciences, said in a statement. "If you have stable terrain, you're not messing up your potentially habitable environments," Moore added. "Favorable conditions might be able to be sustained for longer periods of time." On our home planet, such deposits form under specific landscape and climatic conditions. "On Earth, the places where we tend to see the thickest clay mineral sequences are in humid environments, and those with minimal physical erosion that can strip away newly created weathering products," said co-author Tim Goudge, an assistant professor at the Jackson School's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. However, it remains unclear how Mars' local and global topography, along with its past climate activity, influenced surface weathering and the formation of clay layers. Using data and images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter — the second-longest-operating spacecraft around Mars, after the agency's 2001 Mars Odyssey — Moore, Goudge, and their colleagues studied 150 clay deposits, looking at their shapes and locations, and how close they are to other features like ancient lakes or rivers. They found that the clays are mostly located in low areas near ancient lakes, but not close to valleys where water once flowed strongly. This mix of gentle chemical changes and less intense physical erosion helped the clays stay preserved over time. "[Clay mineral-bearing stratigraphies] tend to occur in areas where chemical weathering was favoured over physical erosion, farther from valley network activity and nearer standing bodies of water," the team wrote in the new study, which was published in the journal Nature Astronomy on June 16. The findings suggest that intense chemical weathering on Mars may have disrupted the usual balance between weathering and climate. RELATED STORIES — NASA's Curiosity Mars rover discovers evidence of ripples from an ancient Red Planet lake (images) — Ocean's worth of water may be buried within Mars — We finally know where to look for life on Mars On Earth, where tectonic activity constantly exposes fresh rock to the atmosphere, carbonate minerals like limestone form when rock reacts with water and carbon dioxide (CO2). This process helps remove CO2 from the air, storing it in solid form and helping regulate the climate over long periods. On Mars, tectonic activity is non-existent, leading to a lack of carbonate minerals and minimal removal of CO2 from the planet's thin atmosphere. As a result, CO2 released by Martian volcanoes long ago likely stayed in the atmosphere longer, making the planet warmer and wetter in the past — conditions the team believes may have encouraged the clay's formation. The researchers also speculate that the clay could have absorbed water and trapped chemical byproducts like cations, preventing them from spreading and reacting with the surrounding rock to form carbonates that remain trapped and unable to leech into the surrounding environment. "[The clay is] probably one of many factors that's contributing to this weird lack of predicted carbonates on Mars," said Moore.
