A meteorite that landed in the Moroccan desert 14 months ago is providing more information about Mars, the planet where it originated. University of Alberta researcher Chris Herd helped in the study of the Tissint meteorite, in which traces of Mars' unique atmosphere are trapped.
"Our team matched traces of gases found inside the Tissint meteorite with samples of Mars' atmosphere collected in 1976 by Viking, NASA's Mars lander mission," said Herd.
Herd explained that 600 million years ago the meteorite started out as a fairly typical volcanic rock on the surface of Mars when it was launched off the planet by the impact of an asteroid.
"At the instant of that impact with Mars, a shock wave shot through the rock," said Herd. "Cracks and fissures within the rock were sealed instantly by the heat, trapping components of Mars' atmosphere inside, and forming black, glassy spots."
The team estimates that for a period between 700,000 and one million years the rock floated through outer space until July, 2011 when it streaked through Earth's atmosphere landing in Morocco.
This is only the fifth time a Martian meteorite landing was witnessed. Herd says the fact that it was picked up just a few months after landing and was not subjected to weathering or contamination on this planet is the key reason why this meteorite is so important.
The Martian weathering involved water, which means water was present on the surface of Mars within the past few hundred million years. But Herd says this meteorite sample does not carry any evidence the water supported any life forms.
"Because the Martian rock was subject to such intense heat any water borne microbial life forms that may have existed deep within cracks of the rock would have been destroyed," said Herd.
Curiosity, NASA's current Mars Rover mission is moving around the Red Planet searching for more information on the history of Mars.
The team's study makes a return mission to Mars that will bring rocks back to Earth all the more crucial, "Martian rocks delivered to Earth by a space craft would provide the best opportunity to see if life was ever clinging to the surface of Mars."
###
Published online Oct.11 in the journal Science.
University of Alberta: http://www.ualberta.ca
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Institute for Highway Safety is known for crash-test safety ratings, but as cars get smarter there's a need to look beyond crashworthiness
Researchers have long struggled to resolve what happens to information when it falls inside a black hole, but the famous physicist says he has a solution
Researchers have been using muons to take a peek inside the nuclear reactors in Japan that melted down in 2011. The results could aid the continuing cleanup operations.
Neutrinos, created by violent phenomena such as black holes and exploding stars, could hold the key to the universe’s most distant and mysterious events
Better MRI scanners could result from a trick in which a magnetic field springs up from nowhere, using materials famous for their link to invisibility cloaks
Water locked away in rocks for 1.5 billion years reveals conditions were right for complex organic molecules to form in deep sea hydrothermal vents
Helium, used in nuclear, medical and, yes, party industries, has become scarce, but new research has revealed a possible way to pinpoint fresh sources
New lab results show how collisions between comets and planets can make the molecules that are the essential building blocks of life.
A startup company says it is expanding the language of DNA to create new tools for drug discovery.
If scientists can convince people to use the app, they hope it will help them solve a cosmic mystery. This story originally aired on March 27, 2015 on All Things Considered.
![]() |
![]() |