A surprising discovery on Mars has been on the minds of researchers for years. Now they present a solution how the found material can be explained.
Houston- In 2016 NASA’s Curiosity rover made an unusual discovery on Mars: The research vehicle discovered the mineral tridymite in a rock sample from Gale Crater. This is a special form of quartz that is usually associated with siliceous volcanism. Tridymite is formed when silicates are first strongly heated and then rapidly cooled. High temperatures and high concentrations of silicic acid are required for its formation. Although this volcanism does exist in some places on earth, no one suspected that it would also occur on the Mars could give, said the US space agency NASA after the find with.
After the surprising discovery of Mars Rover Curiosity researchers tried to find evidence that tridymite can also form at lower temperatures. However, they hadn’t found any, which is why they suspected that Mars could have a more violent and explosive volcanic history than previously thought.
NASA rover “Curiosity” finds “impossible” mineral on Mars – researchers find solution
Now a research team from Rice University in Houston has provided NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the California Institute of Technology with an explanation for the “impossible” mineral tridymite on Mars. as fr.de writes: Martian magma must have stayed longer than usual in a chamber beneath a volcano, where it partially cooled. Silicate-rich parts of the magma rose to the top. A large volcanic eruption then spewed out mainly this silicate-rich material, which also contained tridymite, in the form of lava and ash. The wind then blew the ash up to Gale Crater.
He has to at this point contained water, the researchers are certain. “Since we saw this material only once and it was highly concentrated in a single layer, we assume that the volcano probably erupted at the same time as the lake formed,” explains Kirsten Siebach, co-author of a study on the subject that in the Earth and Planetary Science Letters published online became. “While the sample we analyzed was not exclusively volcanic ash, it was ash that had been water-weathered and sorted.”
The scenario the researchers describe not only explains the finding of the “impossible” mineral tridymite on Mars, but also other things found in the Mars sample – such as opal silicates and a reduced concentration of alumina. If the researchers’ theory is correct, it would mean that explosive volcanism existed on Mars more than three billion years ago. Researchers believe that this is when Mars went from being a warm, humid world to the dry, cold planet we know today. “This work suggests that Mars has a more complex and intriguing volcanic history than we could have imagined before Curiosity.”
Nasa: Three million years ago there must have been volcanism on Mars
The Curiosity rover has been on Mars for about ten years. He landed on August 6, 2012 in Gale Crater, a region where years later he discovered the “impossible” mineral tridymite. “The discovery of tridymite in a mudstone in Gale Crater is one of the most surprising observations that the Curiosity rover has made in its ten years of exploring Mars,” emphasizes Siebach. (Tanya Banner)
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