A recent discovery further supports the hypothesis of past Martian life. The red planet would have sheltered living organisms in distant times, this is what suggests it.
Whether we go there on a rocket or on the back of an asteroid, sooner or later we will end up on Mars. Some, like Elon Musk, are already imagining the future human colonies that will settle on the red planet, but in the meantime, a fundamental question remains: Was there life on Mars? ? If many works of science fiction like to answer in the affirmative, reality calls for caution. However, several discoveries point in this direction.
Martian rocks show signs of the presence of water, for example. A hypothesis that is all the more plausible since traces of an ancient ocean were discovered on its surface. And we know this very well because we are its product: where there is water in a liquid state, there is potentially life. The study published in Science Advances drives the point home after analyzing a fragment of the most famous Martian meteorite in the world: Black Beauty.
Mars could have sheltered life, a new discovery strongly suggests it
This black rock, which you can see in the photo below, was discovered on Earth in 2011. After analysis, it turns out that it comes from Mars and thatit dates from 4.43 billion years ago. However, it was a little before this time that the planets of our solar system gained a solid crust. In other words, the mineral gives an idea of the evolution of Mars just after its formation. Researchers at Curtin University in Australia studied a zircon from Black Beauty and the results are stunning.
The stone has a geochemical signature proving thatit has been in contact with liquid water. This is already an important discovery, but it does not stop there. More precisely, Black Beauty came into contact with hot hydrothermal fluid.
These are those found in volcanic environments or underwater, at ocean ridges. And according to more and more studies, life appeared more than 4 billion years ago at these hydrothermal vents. If they existed on Mars, as is the case on Earth, it is therefore very likely that the phenomena which led to the creation of living organisms also took place on the red planet. It remains to understand what happened to make it so different from ours today.
