Life in Martian Meteorite? |
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Written by spacetravel.org
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Sunday, 12 February 2006 14:56 |
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A team of researchers led by David McKay and Everett Gibson of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, US has noticed similarities between the mix of carbon compounds filling the veins in the Martian Nakhla meteorite and those found in fractured volcanic samples from the Earth's ocean floor. The team has raised the possiblity that life produced the Martian compounds.
The Nakhla meteorite landed in Egypt in 1911 and broke up into many pieces. The UKs Natural History Museum had provided the researchers with fresh samples from the interior. . The researchers found the mineral iddingsite near the rocks tube-like veins. Iddingsite is also formed on Earth, mostly through alteration of olivine, an iron-based mineral, by water. The team also found dark brown or black carbon-rich material within the cracks.
The researchers have suggested that either the carbon-containng components were introduced to Mars 600,000 to 700,000 years ago by a carbon-bearing impactor, or they are "products of biogenic activity and introduced by groundwater into the fracture features in Nakhla.
The team has referred to an upcoming study by oceanographer Martin Fisk, of Oregon State University in Corvalis, in which Fisk reports that DNA is associated with fractures, or tunnels, in rock samples from Earth's ocean floor, a mountain top in Oregon and a rainforest on the California-Oregon border. The size and shape of the tunnels in the Earth samples closely resemble those seen in Nakhla.
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