[jmacusa]

You're 100% correct. It's the ‘’toe bone connected to the ankle bone connected to the shin bone’’ sort of sequence, as it were. A molten iron core produces a magnetic field. The magnetic field holds the atmosphere in place. As the inner core begins to cool down, the magnetic field begins to weaken and the atmosphere begins to dissipate. If there were ever life on Mars it almost certainly never developed beyond the microbial. The notion that some advanced, high tech civilization existed on Mars and then was some how zapped into nothing is science fiction and fantasy. In order for me to believe otherwise would require extraordinary proof of such a claim and to date nothing remotely approaching such fantastic claims has ever been found on The Red Planet.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Not only did Mars’ magnetic field fail, preventing the solar wind from stripping the atmosphere, but it was pummeled by a huge asteroid forming the Hellas Planitia impact basin on one side of the planet and the Tharsis plateau bulge on the other. All this between only half a billion and a billion years after the planet formed. The little red planet that could never had a chance, certainly not for advanced life.

[Telepathic Intruder]

I mean allowing the solar wind to strip the atmosphere. Well, you know.