[release]Researchers have identified rocks that they say could contain the fossilised remains of life on early Mars.
[img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48531000/jpg/_48531811_nilifossae_nasa.jpg[/img]
Is Nili Fossae the site where life on ancient Mars was buried and preserved?
The team made their discovery in the ancient rocks of Nili Fossae.
Their work has revealed that this trench on Mars is a "dead ringer" for a region in Australia where some of the earliest evidence of life on Earth has been buried and preserved in mineral form.
They report the findings in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
The team, led by a scientist from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (Seti) in California, believes that the same "hydrothermal" processes that preserved these markers of life on Earth could have taken place on Mars at Nili Fossae.
The rocks there are up to four billion years old, which means they have been around for three-quarters of the history of Mars.
When, in 2008, scientists first discovered carbonate in those rocks the Mars science community reacted with great excitement; carbonate had long been sought as definitive evidence that the Red planet was habitable - that life could have existed there.
Carbonate is what life - or at least the mineral portion of a living organism - turns into, in many cases, when it is buried. The white cliffs of Dover, for example, are white because they contain limestone, or calcium carbonate.
The mineral comes from the fossilised remains shells and bones and provides a way to investigate the ancient life that existed on early Earth.
In this new research, scientists have taken the identification of carbonate on Mars a step further.
Adrian Brown from the Seti Institute, who led the research, used an instrument aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter called Crism to study the Nilae Fossae rocks with infrared light.
Then he and his team used exactly the same technique to study rocks in an area in north-west Australia called the Pilbara.
"The Pilbara is very cool," Dr Brown told BBC News. "It's part of the Earth that has managed to stay at the surface for around 3.5 billion years - so about three quarters of the history of the Earth."
"It allows us a little window into what was happening on the Earth at its very early stages."
[img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48531000/jpg/_48531809_mars_nasa.jpg[/img]
Scientists believe life could have existed on Mars almost four billion years ago
And all those billions of years ago, scientists believe that microbes formed some distinctive features in the Pilbara rocks - features called "stromatolites" that can be seen and studied today.
"Life made these features. We can tell that by the fact that only life could make those shapes; no geological process could."
This latest study has revealed that the rocks at Nili Fossae are very similar to the Pilbara rocks - in terms of the minerals they contain.
And Dr Brown and his colleagues believe that this shows that the remnants of life on early Mars could be buried at this site.
"If there was enough life to make layers, to make corals or some sort of microbial homes, and if it was buried on Mars, the same physics that took place on Earth could have happened there," he said. That, he suggests, is why the two sites are such a close match.
'Geological olympics'
Dr Brown and many other scientists had hoped that they would soon have the opportunity to get much closer to these rocks. Nili Fossae was put forward as a potential landing site for Nasa'a ambitious new rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, which will be launched in 2011.
The site was championed by other geologists, including John Mustard from Brown University in Rhode Island, whose team made the case to Nasa to have it included in the landing site shortlist for MSL.
But Nilae Fossae was eventually deemed too dangerous a landing site and it was finally removed from the list in June of this year.
[img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48532000/jpg/_48532369_marslandingsitemap.jpg[/img]
The shortlist of four landing sites (labelled in white) and the position landers and rovers already on Mars (in yellow)
"The rover is being landed remotely - so there's no human pilot involved; it's all up to the robot. And [that's] a very dangerous thing," said Dr Brown. "You need 20km of smooth terrain and unfortunately at this site it is pretty rocky - those ancient rocks are pretty weathered and the surface is rocky and uneven."
"It will be visiting another interesting site when it lands, but this is the place that we should be checking out for life on early Mars."
John Grant, a scientist from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and a member of the planetary sciences panel that advises Nasa on the MSL mission, spoke to BBC News earlier this year about the choice of landing site.
He said that the objective of mission was a search for "habitability". It was not, he said, a life detection mission.
"[It] entails looking at geologic environments that may not only have been habitable but where signals associated with that habitability have been preserved," he told BBC News in February.
But that does not alleviate the disappointment that many feel over having Nili Fossae and all its secrets taken off the table for the mission.
And what makes Mars Science Laboratory even more of a crucial mission for scientists is the fact that it will be the last rover to explore the surface of Mars until 2018 - partly because funding the mission has been so extraordinarily expensive.
Dr Brown described the experience of having his favoured landing site removed from the shortlist as the geological equivalent of having "your city's Olympic bid rejected".
MSL will be lowered onto Mars with a landing system called a sky crane
"I also see a race happening here," he said. "It might take us a couple of decades to build our capability to land [unmanned] rovers somewhere geologically interesting on Mars.
"And in those decades, human space flight capabilities are going to develop and we could have the capability to send humans to Mars."
So in this race of the human versus the robots, which will win?
"It's my personal belief," said Dr Brown, "that by the time real human geologists get to go to Mars, the question of whether there is life on Mars will still be open."
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[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10790648]Source[/url]
Wicked
Ever time I think of mars and buried life I can't help to think about doom.
Just send Vladimir Putin up there on a rocket. He's the only human capable of surviving space.
All I can think of is
:dance:
Mars has always been the planet we've been aimed at for finding life.
Holy shit i hope we get to mars before i Die.
Neat. If we ever learn how to make dinosaurs from their fossils, maybe we can make aliens from their fossils!
[editline]04:30PM[/editline]
[QUOTE=Soul-Chicken;23737058]Holy shit i hope we get to mars before i Die.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the boner.
Now we need to find the Protoss.
And then we find the beacon
Prothean ruins?
But seriously, I doubt this. Wouldn't we have found some trace of former life with the rovers?
Sometimes I think that maybe all other planets had same life as we do now in past. Had like air as we do, had people on them, had cities. Had gravitation and water. But then they just died out one after another. And what if that happens to earth in future? Why there is theory that in future there might be life on mars, Why not " There was life on mars before " . It's not that someone has drilled like 50 km down in mars. Maybe there is lost cities just in it.
Mars is a cool planet.
[QUOTE=Communist Cake;23738357]Prothean ruins?
But seriously, I doubt this. Wouldn't we have found some trace of former life with the rovers?[/QUOTE]
Maybe the flat parts that we landed rovers on used to be ocean or something and any trace of life is buried under sediment?
[editline]11:13AM[/editline]
I just realized how depressing it'll be when we find out that Mars used to be rich with life and then something turned it into a wasteland.
Personally, I think Venus would have more of a chance of supporting life at one time than Mars.
Of course, I'm not the exobiological physicist here.
[QUOTE=Steak;23738776]Mars is a cool planet.[/QUOTE]
I see what you did there...
Y'know, the second we find bones up there, the shit's gonna hit the fan. Let's just hope they aren't in the shape of Cthulhu or anything...
:cthulhu:
:science: :iia:
i thought this was gonna be one of those dumb badage boys threads
thanks for the nice article ;)
[QUOTE=MR-X;23735888]Ever time I think of mars and buried life I can't help to think about doom.[/QUOTE]
I think of mass effect, and maybe, we get to find some fort relay and meet other cool aliens
[QUOTE=ZekeTwo;23738935]Maybe the flat parts that we landed rovers on used to be ocean or something and any trace of life is buried under sediment?
[editline]11:13AM[/editline]
I just realized how depressing it'll be when we find out that Mars used to be rich with life and then something turned it into a wasteland.[/QUOTE]
I don't think that'd be all too depressing, the fact that there was rich life is amazing on its own. Sure it being gone is sad and stuff, but it's still a remarkable thing to think about.
Finally.... Total Recall is capable of becoming a reality!!!
Forget Total Recall, I'm hoping for Mass Effect!
[QUOTE=ZekeTwo;23738935]Maybe the flat parts that we landed rovers on used to be ocean or something and any trace of life is buried under sediment?[/QUOTE]
That's the trouble with our landing craft in this time period, they're designed for relatively-flat terrain. Now, if we had some kinda great big tripod to traverse the more "bumpy" surfaces of the planet, or floating robot dirigibles like Ike and Leo from Alien Planet, then we'd be able to venture into other areas beyond the dead seas of Mars.
Mars is such a cool place. I know it's basically just an iron oxide desert wasteland, but it just seems so neat.
[QUOTE=Tetracycline;23739747]Forget Total Recall, I'm hoping for Mass Effect![/QUOTE]
Then you know that Mars becomes pretty much useless after we find FTL travel.
[QUOTE=cyanide101;23739827]Then you know that Mars becomes pretty much useless after we find FTL travel.[/QUOTE]
That's good though, who cares about Mars when there's the possibility of FTL?
[QUOTE=yuki;23739811]Mars is such a cool place. I know it's basically just an iron oxide desert wasteland, but it just seems so neat.[/QUOTE]
All that iron oxide's plenty of "ore" to smelt.
Also, imagine if all that rust was once loads of metal buildings. Miles upon miles of iron metropolis, stretching across the face of Mars... Would probably give a bit of scope on the size of whatever civilisation might've lived there, if any.
[QUOTE=Tetracycline;23739848]That's good though, who cares about Mars when there's the possibility of FTL?[/QUOTE]
figure out how to live on the moon, mars and venus and you've figured out how to live on pretty much every terrestrial world in the universe
[QUOTE=wonkadonk;23739920]figure out how to live on the moon, mars and venus and you've figured out how to live on pretty much every terrestrial world in the universe[/QUOTE]
Well I'd imagine if you find something like FTL you'd be able to find out how to live anywhere.
[QUOTE=Tetracycline;23739944]Well I'd imagine if you find something like FTL you'd be able to find out how to live anywhere.[/QUOTE]
nah it seems to me as if they'd be two completely separate engineering feats
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