The Mars Curiosity rover has made a breakthrough discovery on Mars. The materials he found may indicate that there is life on the Red Planet.
Scientists have long believed that life once existed on Mars, and the Gale Crater is actually the remains of an ancient lake. Although not every piece of the puzzle is clear and we don’t have answers to every question, another piece seems to suggest that the Red Planet was teeming with life billions of years ago.
An interesting discovery on Mars
The Curiosity rover discovered rock material on Mars that is rich in unusual amounts of manganese. It is a mineral that occurs abundantly on Earth, including lakes. In addition, it is closely related to microbial life.
On Earth, these deposits occur all the time due to the high oxygen content in our atmosphere, produced by photosynthetic life and microbes that help capture the manganese oxidation reactions that.
– said Patrick Gasda, researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Does this mean that Mars once had life and that the Gale Crater is actually the remains of a large lake? Such conclusions suggest themselves, but despite this, scientists are still cautious.
We have no evidence of life on Mars, and it is not clear how oxygen was produced in the ancient atmosphere of Mars, so it is a mystery how manganese oxide was formed and focus here. These findings point to larger processes taking place in the Martian atmosphere or surface waters and show that more work needs to be done to understand oxidation on Mars.
– added the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Scientists plan to continue studying the surface of the Red Planet to better understand all the processes that happened on Mars.
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Image source: Shutterstock
Text source: Futurism, NASA
2024-05-04 07:08:00
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