Heretofore the beginning of astronomy, humans have been obsessed with the suspicion as to whether there is life somewhere else in the universe. However, much of the scientific emphasis on Mars is dedicated to answering this question, as there are indications that the red planet may have had microbial existence in its youth.
But you don’t have to go to Mars to survey the planet. Approximately 11 million years ago, a cluster of Martian meteorites recognized as the nakhlites struck Earth, likely propelled by the force of a significant influence on Mars that sent debris into the solar system that ultimately found its way to Earth. Swedish doctoral student Josefin Martell and a team of scientists at Lund University have been examining the properties of a supply of these rocks.
According to Martell, “A more probable explanation is that the reaction took place after small accumulations of underground ice melted during a meteorite impact about 630 million years ago. Of course, that doesn’t mean that life couldn’t have existed in other places on Mars or that there couldn’t have been life at other times,”.
Utilizing non-destructive imaging methods, the Swedish geologists assumed the limited extent to which water interacted with grains of a mineral called olivine. Outcomes of the study demonstrated the minerals did indeed respond to water.
Martell suggested that minerals possibly react with small, underground ice deposits that softened when a meteorite collided with Mars over 700 hundred million years later. Nonetheless, life could have occurred in other spots or times on Mars.
