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A special type of material found on Mars is revealing more about the Red Planet's climatic past.
RENAULT – Today, Mars is a cold and inhospitable planet, with temperatures ranging from -150 degrees Celsius to 20 degrees Celsius. But what was it like in the past? Was the Red Planet also icy cold back then, or did it have a more temperate climate like Earth? Given evidence of liquid water on Mars in the form of lakes and rivers, it’s reasonable to assume that the planet was once warm. But this may not be the case, a new study shows.
For the study, a research team led by the Desert Research Institute in Nevada looked at three very different regions on Earth: Newfoundland, northern California and western Nevada. There, the research team collected materials and compared them to materials found on Mars. The Martian materials were collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover in Gale Crater. The study In the specialized magazine Earth and Environment Communications Published.
Was Mars Once Cold or Warm? New Study Provides Clues
“Gale Crater is a former lake basin — it clearly had water. But what were the environmental conditions like when the water was there?” asks Anthony Feldman, one of the study’s authors. “We’ll never find a direct equivalent on Mars because the conditions on Mars and Earth are so different. But we can look at trends in terrestrial conditions and use them to try to translate them to Mars questions.”
The material Curiosity found is called “X-ray amorphous”—it lacks the typical repeating atomic structure that characterizes minerals. As a result, the material can’t be easily described using traditional techniques like X-ray diffraction. “You can think of X-ray amorphous materials as Jell-O,” Feldman explains. “It’s a soup of different elements and chemicals that slide over each other.”
Amorphous X-ray Matter on Mars – What Does It Say About the Planet’s Past?
The material on Mars is rich in iron and silicon dioxide but poor in aluminum. What exactly it is and what it says about the Red Planet’s past is still unclear. That’s why the research team looked for something similar on Earth, and found it in one of the places they visited on Earth. The subarctic conditions in Newfoundland created a material that was chemically similar to the Martian material. However, soils in warmer climates (California and Nevada) were not comparable.
“This shows that you need water to form these materials,” Feldman concludes. “But cold conditions must be present, with average annual temperatures close to freezing, to maintain amorphous materials in the soil. Amorphous materials are often viewed as relatively unstable—the atoms have not yet formed into their final crystalline form at the atomic level.” Brought to shape. The researcher puts it in one notice Like this: “We believe that the extremely cold, subfreezing conditions are a kinetic limiting factor that allows these materials to form and be preserved.”
Was the climate on Mars like Iceland?
It appears that Gale Crater on Mars at least was cold enough for a long time for the material to form. “This study improves our understanding of the climate on Mars,” Feldman said. “The results suggest that the abundance of this material in Gale Crater is consistent with subarctic conditions, similar to those found in Iceland, for example.” (unpaid invoice)
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