Photograph of "Home Plate" area of Mars, showing silica formations poking out of the Martian soil, which some scientists think may have been formed by microbial life.
(Image Sources: NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology; Smithsonsian Magazine)
By Sarah Scoles, Smithsonian.com
The hunt for signs of life on Mars has been on for decades, and so far scientists have found only barren dirt and rocks. Now a pair of astronomers thinks that strangely shaped minerals inside a Martian crater could be the clue everyone has been waiting for.
In 2008, scientists announced that NASA's Spirit Rover
had discovered deposits of a mineral called opaline silica inside
Mars's Gusev crater. That on its own is not as noteworthy as the
silica’s shape: Its outer layers are covered in tiny nodules that look
like heads of cauliflower sprouting from the red dirt.
No one knows for sure how those shapes—affectionately called “micro-digitate silica protrusions”—formed. But based on recent discoveries in a Chilean desert, Steven Ruff and Jack Farmer, both of Arizona State University in Tempe, think the silica might have been sculpted by microbes. At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December, they made the case that these weird minerals might be our best targets for identifying evidence of past life on Mars.
If the logic holds, the silica cauliflower could go down in history as arguably the biggest discovery ever in astronomy. But biology is hard to prove, especially from millions of miles away, and Ruff and Farmer aren’t claiming victory yet. All they’re saying is that maybe these enigmatic growths are mineral greetings from ancient aliens, and someone should investigate.
Spirit found the silica protrusions near the “Home Plate” region
of Gusev crater, where geologists think hot springs or geysers once
scorched the red planet's surface. To understand what that long-dormant
landscape used to be like, we have to look closer to home: hydrothermal
regions of modern Earth that resemble Mars in its ancient past.
To that end, Ruff has twice in the past year trekked to Chile’s Atacama Desert, a high plateau west of the Andes cited as the driest non-polar place on Earth. Scientists often compare this desert to Mars, and not just poetically. It’s actually like Mars. The soil is similar, as is the extreme desert climate.
In this part of the Atacama, it rains less than 100 millimeters per year, and temperatures swing from -13°F to 113°F. With an average elevation of 13,000 feet above sea level, lots of ultraviolet radiation makes it through the thin atmosphere to the ground, akin to the punishing radiation that reaches the surface of Mars.
Just as we interpret others’ behavior and emotions by peering into our own psychology, scientists look around our planet to help them interpret Mars, find its most habitable spots and look for signs of life. While the Atacama does have breathable oxygen and evolutionarily clever foxes (which Mars does not), its environment mimics Mars’s pretty well and makes a good stand-in for what the red planet may have been like when it was warmer and wetter.
So when geologists see something in the Atacama or another Mars analog that matches a feature on the red planet, they reasonably conclude that the two could have formed the same way. It’s not a perfect method, but it’s the best we’ve got.
“I don't think there is any way around using modern Earth analogs to test where Martian microbes may be found,” says Kurt Konhauser of the University of Alberta, who is the editor-in-chief of the journal Geobiology.
To understand Home Plate, it makes sense that Ruff turned to El Tatio, a region in the Atacama that is home to more than 80 geysers. While most other earthly animals wouldn’t last long here, many microbes do just fine, and fossil evidence suggests they also thrived in the distant past. By inference, Mars’s Home Plate might have once made a nice microbial home.
But the comparison goes further: When Ruff peered closely at El Tatio’s silica formations, he saw shapes remarkably similar to those that Spirit had seen on Mars. Fraternal cauliflower twins also exist in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and the Taupo Volcanic Zone in New Zealand. In both of those places, the silica bears the fossilized fingerprints of microbial life.
Since microbes sculpted the silica features in Wyoming and New Zealand, it's possible they also helped make the formations at El Tatio. And if microbes were involved with the cauliflower at El Tatio, maybe they made it grow on Mars, too.
No one knows for sure how those shapes—affectionately called “micro-digitate silica protrusions”—formed. But based on recent discoveries in a Chilean desert, Steven Ruff and Jack Farmer, both of Arizona State University in Tempe, think the silica might have been sculpted by microbes. At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December, they made the case that these weird minerals might be our best targets for identifying evidence of past life on Mars.
If the logic holds, the silica cauliflower could go down in history as arguably the biggest discovery ever in astronomy. But biology is hard to prove, especially from millions of miles away, and Ruff and Farmer aren’t claiming victory yet. All they’re saying is that maybe these enigmatic growths are mineral greetings from ancient aliens, and someone should investigate.
To that end, Ruff has twice in the past year trekked to Chile’s Atacama Desert, a high plateau west of the Andes cited as the driest non-polar place on Earth. Scientists often compare this desert to Mars, and not just poetically. It’s actually like Mars. The soil is similar, as is the extreme desert climate.
In this part of the Atacama, it rains less than 100 millimeters per year, and temperatures swing from -13°F to 113°F. With an average elevation of 13,000 feet above sea level, lots of ultraviolet radiation makes it through the thin atmosphere to the ground, akin to the punishing radiation that reaches the surface of Mars.
Just as we interpret others’ behavior and emotions by peering into our own psychology, scientists look around our planet to help them interpret Mars, find its most habitable spots and look for signs of life. While the Atacama does have breathable oxygen and evolutionarily clever foxes (which Mars does not), its environment mimics Mars’s pretty well and makes a good stand-in for what the red planet may have been like when it was warmer and wetter.
So when geologists see something in the Atacama or another Mars analog that matches a feature on the red planet, they reasonably conclude that the two could have formed the same way. It’s not a perfect method, but it’s the best we’ve got.
“I don't think there is any way around using modern Earth analogs to test where Martian microbes may be found,” says Kurt Konhauser of the University of Alberta, who is the editor-in-chief of the journal Geobiology.
To understand Home Plate, it makes sense that Ruff turned to El Tatio, a region in the Atacama that is home to more than 80 geysers. While most other earthly animals wouldn’t last long here, many microbes do just fine, and fossil evidence suggests they also thrived in the distant past. By inference, Mars’s Home Plate might have once made a nice microbial home.
But the comparison goes further: When Ruff peered closely at El Tatio’s silica formations, he saw shapes remarkably similar to those that Spirit had seen on Mars. Fraternal cauliflower twins also exist in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and the Taupo Volcanic Zone in New Zealand. In both of those places, the silica bears the fossilized fingerprints of microbial life.
Since microbes sculpted the silica features in Wyoming and New Zealand, it's possible they also helped make the formations at El Tatio. And if microbes were involved with the cauliflower at El Tatio, maybe they made it grow on Mars, too.
More on NASA's Mars Rover Spirit: Link >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_%28rover%29
Source: Smithsonian Magazine.
2016 February 5.
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