Researchers found a Martian mineral from Antarctica within an ice core. The finding indicates that minerals were forged in the same manner on both Earth and Mars in the shape of a delicate, yellow-brown powder known as jarosite.
The mineral is from dust embedded in the layers of ancient glaciers. Science Mag noted that this discovery also shows how significant this glacier is on the Red Planet. They not only carved valleys, but they also helped to generate Martian material.
This image, acquired on Nov. 24, 2015 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows the western side of an elongated pit depression in the eastern Noctis Labyrinthus region of Mars. Spectra extracted from the light-toned deposit by the spacecraft's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument are consistent with the mineral jarosite, which is a potassium and iron hydrous sulfate.
What Is This Martian Mineral Doing Here?
Jarosite was first spotted in 2004 on Mars, when the NASA Curiosity Rover rolled up its smooth layers. Along with iron, sulfate, potassium, and acidic environments, the finding made news for needing water to shape.
It is not necessary to fulfill these criteria conveniently on Mars. Theorizing how minerals could become so plentiful, scientists started. Some people assume the evaporation of a tiny volume of saline acidic water could have left the mineral behind.
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Jarosite, Science Mag reported, is an uncommon mineral that develops in mining waste exposed to air and rain. According to NASA, it may also develop near the vents of volcanoes.
Another theory is that inside a massive ice deposit that probably enveloped the earth billions of years ago, jarosite was born. Dust accumulates within the ice as the ice layer expands with time.
Inside the bags of mud within the ice crystals might have been jarosite. But in the Solar System, the mechanism has never been detected anywhere.
Unusual Discovery
Giovanni Baccolo, a geologist at the University of Milan-Bicocca and lead author of the new research, told Science that the team never intended to discover the mineral in the Antarctic.
But when the team removed the ice core from the earth over a mile long (1,620 meters), they discovered trace crystals of jarosite, finer than grains of sand, hidden in the deepest layers of the ice.
The team also noticed strange dust particles at the deepest ice core, which they figured could be jarosite.
Bacolo and his colleagues calculated how the mineral absorbs X-rays to determine the mineral's identity. Under a heavy electron microscope, they have studied the granules, making sure it was a jarosite.
The researcher stated that these ultra-thick jarosite slabs could have developed on Mars because the Red Planet is much dustier than Antarctica. However, he said alkaline basalt rocks would neutralize acidic humidity in the Martian crust.
Jarosite is present on Earth in dumps of mine waste exposed to air and rain, but it is not common. No one assumed they might encounter him in Antarctica, and Bacolo did not track him down.
Some speculated that dust providing the needed minerals, iron, sulfate and potassium, may have been trapped within when ice covered the earth billions of years ago.
However, in a paper published on Jan. 19 in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers stated that the detection of jarosite particles trapped in the Antarctic ice may confirm the hypothesis.
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READ MORE about Mars on the Science Times.