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It’s impossible to know what Mars looked like billions of years ago, but the ingenious excitement of one robotic explorer is giving astronomers a glimpse into the past.
NASA’s endurance rover has just marked 1,000 days on the red planet. Percy completed his investigation of an ancient river delta that fed a Martian surface feature called Jezero Crater.
By studying and sampling rocks Since landing in February 2021, the rover has helped scientists piece together a timeline of when a shallow lake filled the crater.
Now, the rover continues its quest to find signs of past life on the red planet. And a new discovery on Earth could give scientists an idea of what fossils would look like if they were on Mars.
Once upon a planet
A previously hidden lagoon system in Puna de Atacama, an arid plateau in northwestern Argentina, is providing a rare window into what ecosystems were like on early Earth billions of years ago.
Within the lagoons are living fossils called giant stromatolites, or layered rocks created by algae and minerals such as gypsum and rock salt.
The inhospitable environment of the high salt plains is often compared to Mars. But since the red planet was probably covered with lakes and possibly oceans billions of years ago, Mars may once have been more like Earth.
“If we’re going to find any kind of fossils on Mars, this is our best guess as to what they would be, because these are the oldest from the Earth’s rock record,” a said Brian Hynek, professor in the department. geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Other life
Saturn’s moon Enceladus has long intrigued astronomers as an ocean world in our solar system that could support life.
Plumes of ice grains and water vapor rise from cracks in its thick icy crust, suggesting the existence of a salty subterranean ocean. And now, a new analysis of data collected by NASA’s Cassini mission has revealed hydrogen cyanide, a molecule that plays a central role in the processes driving the origin of life.
What’s more, the research team found evidence that the moon has a chemical energy source powered by organic compounds.
Together, the presence of water, energy and the building blocks of life suggest that Enceladus may be the best place to search for life beyond Earth.
Discoveries
Some of the most exciting art and archaeology The discoveries of the year were both rare and unexpected.
Historians have identified the man carrying a pad of sticks on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s 1971 album commonly known as “Led Zeppelin IV”.
Researchers have discovered the oldest known European shoes and found a Bronze Age sword that still glittered.
And a nearly 400-year-old mural emerged from behind a kitchen wall, and a hidden hall was found inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
We are a family
People who tend to rise early may have the Neanderthals to their credit, according to new research.
Neanderthals evolved while living at high latitudes in Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. Over time, our extinct relatives probably became better adapted to seasonal variations in daylight compared to early modern humans who lived closer to the equator in Africa.
This genetic heritage may have been passed on as people migrated across the globe and encountered Neanderthals. It is just one of many Neanderthal genes that have been traced from ancient DNA and found in modern human populations.
Around the globe
A new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope has given astronomers their closest and most detailed look yet at the remnants of an exploded star.
This is the second time researchers have used Webb to observe Cassiopeia A, a bright supernova museum in our galaxy.
Some of the newly seen features include ghostly light echoes, which look like the offspring of a giant cosmic cloud.
Separately, a team of researchers observed a mysterious rapid radio burst, repeated from space that had never been seen before: The phenomenon has a frequency similar to a celestial slide whistle.
Inquiries
Settle in and embark on a journey with these unusual reads:
— Engineers are trying to fix a computer glitch on the 46-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft that stopped sending back scientific data as it probed the outer edges of our solar system 15 billion miles away.
— A huge, well-preserved skull of a prehistoric sea monster has been found on a beach in southern England and will be detailed in a documentary presented by legendary naturalist Sir David Attenborough.
– Scientists have discovered an unusual phenomenon that keeps Himalayan glaciers cool despite warming global temperatures.
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