NASA’s Curiosity Rover Discovers Hexagonal Pattern on Mars, Indicating Wet and Dry Conditions

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is standing: 12/08/2023, 19:07

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NASA’s Curiosity rover in action. (illustrations / photo archive) © image alliance / dpa

Is there possibly life on Mars? New discoveries by NASA’s Curiosity rover help answer that question.

Toulouse – Researchers still don’t know exactly how life arose on Earth. However, one theory remains: the alternating cycles of dry and wet conditions on Earth caused microbial life to emerge from complex chemical building blocks. For this reason, NASA’s Curiosity rover’s new discovery on Mars is of great interest to research.

The rover, which has explored the Red Planet for eleven years, is currently climbing Mount Sharp in Gale Crater on Mars. There he found something that would seem inconspicuous to an ordinary person: a crack in the dry ground. The cracks form a hexagonal pattern – which makes it very interesting to study, because science knows how these hexagonal cracks are formed.

According to the researchers, the hexagonal pattern detected by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars indicates wet and dry cycles. It will make life possible. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/IRAP

Hexagonal Pattern on Mars – Research shows wet and dry conditions

When clay dries, it shrinks. This creates a T-shaped crack. Curiosity has previously detected such cracks on Mars, as it is an indication that clay formed once and dried out again. However, if the clay is in contact with water more frequently after this, the T-shaped crack softens and eventually forms a Y shape—a characteristic hexagonal pattern is formed.

“These particular mud cracks form when wet and dry conditions occur frequently – perhaps even seasonally,” explains William Rabin of the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetary Science in Toulouse. Rabin is a leader in studying hexagrams on Mars in a journal alam published has become.

The hexagonal fissures on Mars are billions of years old

Someone said that the hexagonal pattern on Mars was formed when new sediment was washed away by water NASA ads. The results of the study concluded that wet and dry conditions alternated over a long period of time. The salty crust preserved the silt rifts above it for billions of years, allowing researchers to see it today. Using Curiosity’s Mastcam and ChemCam instruments, the research team found the salt to be between 3.8 and 3.6 billion years old.

Rabin noted, “This is the first real evidence that the ancient climate of Mars had regular wet and dry cycles like Earth’s.” “But more importantly, the wet-dry cycle is useful—and possibly important—for the molecular evolution that could give rise to life.”

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Mars’ wet-dry cycle may have made life possible

Water is essential to life, but it requires a certain balance—not too much, not too little. According to research, the conditions that can sustain microbial life are not the same as those needed to drive the chemical reactions that can give rise to life. The dry-wet cycle controls the concentrations of chemicals that enable the important reactions that give rise to life.

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NASA’s Curiosity rover has been exploring Mars for eleven years

This isn’t the first time NASA’s Curiosity rover has made discoveries on Mars that suggest microbial life may have existed there. “In eleven years, we have found overwhelming evidence that microbial life may have existed on ancient Mars. Now the mission has found evidence of conditions that might also have supported the emergence of life,” said Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. . Curiosity, among other things, has detected organic matter on Mars.

This is a great opportunity for researchers: Just because Mars lacks plate tectonics, billions of years of mud rifts can still be seen – evidence of a very distant past. But on Earth, the movement of tectonic plates causes similar features to disappear. “We are lucky to have a planet as close to us as Mars, which still retains memories of the natural processes that might give rise to life,” said Rabin. (unpaid bill)

2023-08-12 18:04:39
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