A Laser Zapped the Rocks on Mars and Revealed a Long-Lost Water World – Popular Mechanics

Water-filled oceans, meandering river deltas, varying seasons, and an insulating atmosphere are usually descriptors for Earththe only known rock to support life in the solar system. But during the Noarchian, a period in Mars history some 4.1 to 3.5 billion years ago, these descriptions perfectly matched the fourth rock from the Sun. Back then, the not-so-red planet couldve even supported life. In fact, Mars boasts the oldest known prebiotic, life-supporting conditions.

Of course, the Mars of today isnt so hospitableits atmosphere is nearly non-existent, riverbeds are dried up, and any water is now locked under Mars iron oxide-rich soil or CO2-filled ice caps. In other words, it isnt a great place for humans, so luckily weve sent robots in our place to glimpse into our planetary neighbors geologic past.

This week a new study, published in the

The Gale lake environment, as revealed by these ancient rocks, gives us a window into a habitable environment that looks surprisingly similar to places on Earth today, ChemCams principal investigator Nina Lanza, said in a press statement. Manganese minerals are common in the shallow, oxic waters found on lake shores on Earth, and its remarkable to find such recognizable features on ancient Mars.

The piece of tech thats central to the ChemCam is a high-powered laser that can deliver a dizzying 1 million watts of power into the area the side of a pin-head. While only providing this burst of energy for five-billionths of a second, its enough to excite electrons in the soil sample and the spectrometer reads the light, detailing the atomic makeup of the sample.

The puzzling thing about manganese is that, at least on Earth the enrichment process is sped up by microbes and oxygennot exactly modern Mars has in spades.

On Mars, we dont have evidence for life, and the mechanism to produce oxygen in Marss ancient atmosphere is unclear, so how the manganese oxide was formed and concentrated here is really puzzling, Los Alamos National Laboratorys Patrick Gasda, lead author on the study, said in a press statement. These findings point to larger processes occurring in the Martian atmosphere or surface water and shows that more work needs to be done to understand oxidation on Mars.

Its possible that manganese became enriched in these deposits as water percolate through soil adjacent to some ancient river or lake. Because oxidation states of manganese can be used by terrestrial microbes for energy, its possible that Martian microbial life similarly fed on these deposits.

Today, Earth stands alone in the Solar System for its remarkable ability to support life, but look back four billion years in the past, and Mars wouldve been the clear favorite for finding life.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.

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A Laser Zapped the Rocks on Mars and Revealed a Long-Lost Water World - Popular Mechanics