The authors of the new study believe that the mysterious "halos" of rocks surrounding cracks in the Martian crater
According to new data from NASA's Curiosity rover, the bottom of an ancient, dried-up lake on Mars could beIn addition to giving the cracked surface of Martian Gale Crater a beautiful sheen, opals cansuggest that water and rock interacted under the Martian surface much later than previously thought.This changes the way scientists think about the existence of microbial life.
Water affects life, whatwe know her. Therefore, scientists often focus on searching for it in the study of other planets. There is no water column on the “dried up” Mars, so scientists are looking for its geological signs that indicate its existence in the past. One of them was found around faults on the Martian surface. Some of them are surrounded by “halos” of a lighter color. Scientists have found that they are rich in opal. Interestingly, silica-rich rocks must interact with water to form this precious mineraloid.
As part of a new study, expertsstudied an extensive archive of images from the Curiosity rover and found that opal-rich halos are very common. They're likely found throughout Gale Crater, an ancient 154km-wide lakebed that Curiosity has been exploring since the mission began in 2012.
“A new analysis of archival data shows"There are striking similarities between all the fault halos that we observed much later in the mission," said Travis Gabriel, lead author of the study and a research physicist at the USGS. “ To see that these fault networks were so widespread and probably full of opal is just incredible.”
Geologists studied old images of Curiosity aroundGale Crater, and noticed in one photo taken much earlier in the mission, a light halo of rock surrounding the rift. It looked almost the same as those discovered quite recently. Data from the Curiosity ChemCam instrument, which analyzes rocks using imaging and spectrometry, revealed that recently studied light rocks likely contained silica-rich opals.
To confirm the chemical composition of these rocks,experts conducted additional analysis of another set of fault halos at another location inside the crater, the Lubango drilling site. Here, scientists used Curiosity's Dynamic Albedo Neutron (DAN) instrument, which measures neutrons knocked off the surface of Mars by the cosmic rays that constantly bombard Mars. They are slowed down by the presence of hydrogen, which is one of the main components of water. When DAN detects a higher proportion of slow neutrons, it means there are more hydrous rocks (such as opal) in the area.
At the Lubango site, the DAN results were confirmed.the lighter halos on the ground do contain opal, as do other sites around Gale Crater. This data, along with photographs of rift halos taken much earlier in the mission, suggests that “water was everywhere” in Gale Crater in later history.
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