This story is part of Welcome to Marsour series exploring the red planet.
Mars is a mysterious planet, especially when it comes to finding out if life ever existed there. A new study of a rare Martian meteorite that landed on Earth suggests that scientists may want to reconsider the timeline for when the red planet may have been suitable for life.
“Black Beauty” is a remarkable meteorite discovered in the Sahara Desert in 2011. Its official name is Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 and was first described in a study from 2013, which dates back to about 2.1 billion years ago. He got his nickname from his dark appearance. The small piece of the surface of Mars is largely made of basalt and contains rock fragments and minerals, including some very old grains of the mineral zircon.
Research team led by Curtin University PhD. candidate Morgan Cox examines the zircons of Black Beauty. A study published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday focused on zircon grains, which show the type of impact damage that usually results from large meteorites, violent smashes to the scale of what killed the dinosaurs on Earth.
“This bean is truly a one-time gift from the Red Planet. High-pressure shock deformation has not been found before in any Black Beauty mineral,” Cox said in a statement from Curtin. “This discovery of 4.45 billion-year-old impact damage in Martian zircon provides new evidence of dynamic processes that have affected the surface of early Mars.
Zircon is helping scientists track the timeline for potential habitability on Mars. “Previous studies of zircon in Martian meteorites suggest that habitable conditions may have existed 4.2 billion years ago based on the lack of definitive impact damage,” said study co-author Aaron Cavosi. Black Beauty’s zircon seems to indicate that Mars was pretty well broken at the time.
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We know what large-scale impacts they have caused on Earth (sorry, dinosaurs) and such events could affect any evolving life on Mars. Cavosi said the “habitability window” for Mars may be later than previously thought, perhaps putting it at 3.7 billion to 3.9 billion years ago. This is associated with a period of time when the planet probably had liquid water on the surface. Water is a vital ingredient for life on Earth and is therefore of great interest to other worlds.
A small piece of a meteorite on Mars gives researchers a lot of new information to consider when it comes to the history of Mars. Eventually, we may have even more data to work with if NASA manages to retrieve the surface. samples collected from the rover Perseverance and return them to Earth for study.
Has Mars ever hosted microbial life? We may not know exactly where to look, but we may know a little more about it when to watch.