Ancient water on Mars

Gwynston

This is interesting:
Link: Deep Canadian mine yields ancient water between 1.5 and 2.6 billion years old.

Of interest to advocates of life during Mars' long-lost liquid water era:

Mars, for example, is cold and dry at its surface today, but the evidence suggests it was much warmer and wetter billions of years ago.

A lot of that early water was lost to space, but some of it is thought to have retreated to deep reservoirs.

Findings like those at Timmins raise the possibility that similar, long-isolated environments could yet persist on Mars, possibly supporting micro-organisms.

Reading this did raise some questions in me though: This assumes that the possible deep reservoirs on Mars are still liquid. Is this the case?

The article mentions that the water deep below the Earth's surface was 40-50 degC, presumably because it's closer to the hot, active core. But does Mars have much internal heat?

Enough heat to keep water liquid?

Captain Chaos

Plate tectonics stopped on Mars when it's core partially solidified and stopped spinning, hence why it has no magnetic field to shield it against the solar wind. I doubt it has much internal heat and it's volcanoes are not that active at all if at all.

It does have it's relatively small ice caps though so there is frozen water on the surface.

Gwynston

Yes, I know there's frozen water on Mars. That's why I was questioning the leap being made in the article: that just because there is ancient water in deep reservoirs on Earth which might contain ancient life, that doesn't mean that the same may be the case on Mars. Because any water there is unlikely to be liquid. Unless anyone knows otherwise?