What Martian Meteorites Can Teach About Earth's Origins - SpaceRef

What do Mars and Iceland have in common? These days, not so much.

But more than 4.5 billion years ago, it is possible that the Red Planet had a crust comparable to Iceland’s today. This discovery, hidden within the oldest Martian fragments found on Earth, could provide information about our planet that was lost over billions of years of geological movement and could help explain why Earth evolved into a planet that supports the vast diversity of life that Mars did. no.

This insight into Earth’s past comes from a new study, published today in Nature Communications, by an international team that includes an NAU researcher. The study details how they discovered the possible origin of Mars from a 4.48 billion-year-old meteorite, informally named Black Beauty. Its origin is one of the oldest regions on Mars.

“This meteorite records the first stages of the evolution of Mars and, by extension, all the terrestrial planets, including Earth,” said Valerie Payré, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science. “Because Earth lost its old surface mainly due to plate tectonics, observing such a setting in the very ancient terrain of Mars is a rare window into the ancient Earth’s surface that has been lost for a long time.”

What Mars can tell us about Earth

The team, led by Anthony Lagain of Curtin University in Australia, searched for the origin of the Martian meteorite (officially named NWA—Northwest Africa—7034 for where it was found on Earth). This meteorite, which chemically indicates that Mars had volcanic activity similar to that found on Earth, records the first stage of Mars’ evolution. Although ejected from the Martian surface five to 10 million years ago after the asteroid impact, its source region and geological context remain a mystery.

The team studied the chemical and physical properties of Black Beauty to determine where it came from; they determined it from Terra Cimmeria-Sirenum, one of the most ancient regions on Mars. It may have a surface similar to Earth’s continent. Planetary bodies like Mars have craters all over their surface, so finding the right one is challenging. In previous studies, Lagain’s team developed a crater detection algorithm that uses high-resolution images of the Martian surface to identify small impact craters, finding about 90 million craters 50 meters in diameter. In this study, they were able to isolate the most plausible ejection site—the Karratha crater which excavated an older ejection crater called Khujirt.

“For the first time, we know the geological context of the only brecciated Martian sample available on Earth, 10 years before NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is set to send back samples collected by the Perseverance rover currently exploring the Jezero crater,” Lagain said. . , a researcher in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin. “This research paves the way for finding the location of the ejection of other Martian meteorites, in order to create the most complete view of the geological history of the Red Planet.”

Payré studied the nature and formation of the Martian crust to determine whether Earth and Mars had a common past that included crusts such as continents and oceans. He used orbital observations captured in this region to investigate whether traces of volcanism similar to Iceland exist on Mars.

“To this day, the complexity of the Martian crust is not understood, and knowing about the origins of these fascinating ancient fragments could direct future explorers and spatial missions to explore the Terra Sirenum-Cimmeria region that hides the truth of the evolution of Mars, and possibly Earth,” he said. “This work paves the way for discovering the location of other Martian meteorite ejections that will provide the most complete view of Mars’ geological history and will answer one of the most interesting questions: why did Mars, now dry and cold, evolve so differently from Earth, the planet that evolved to form a planet. life?”

The team’s algorithm was adapted to detect the impact craters that constellation Mercury and the Moon, other terrestrial bodies. It can be used to help unravel their geographic history and answer fundamental questions about their formation and evolution. This work is a starting point to guide future investigations of the Solar System.

astrobiology,

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