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Ancient Minerals: Which Gave Rise to Life?

By Guest PostDecember 9, 2013Scienceancient minerals, beryllium, clay minerals, curiosity rover, earth surface, hadean eon, hadean mineralogy, hydrothermal areas, life, lithium, magnesium silicate forsterite, mars today, metabolic energy, molecular building blocks, molybdenum, most abundant minerals, paleomineralogy, rare elements, rise to life, robert downs, robert hazen, ruff project, scientific models, synthesis, university of arizona

Washington, D.C.— Life originated as a result of natural processes that exploited early Earth’s raw materials. Scientific models of life’s origins almost always look to minerals for such essential tasks as the synthesis of life’s molecular building blocks or the supply of metabolic energy. But this assumes that the mineral species found on Earth today are much the same as they were during Earth’s first 550 million years—the Hadean Eon—when life emerged. A new analysis of Hadean mineralogy challenges that assumption. It is published in American Journal of Science.

Carnegie’s Robert Hazen compiled a list of every plausible mineral species on the Hadean Earth and concludes that no more than 420 different minerals—about 8 percent of the nearly 5,000 species found on Earth today—would have been present at or near Earth’s surface. (more…)

Thawing ‘Dry Ice’ Drives Groovy Action on Mars

By Guest PostJanuary 27, 2013Sciencearizona, candice hansen, carbon dioxide sublimation, crism, dark fans, driving factor, dry ice, dynamic process, dynamic world, earth, frozen carbon dioxide, ganna portyankina, groovy action, hirise camera, ice cap, mars, mars reconnaissance orbiter, mars south pole, mars today, martian sand dunes, martian years, NASA, north polar, planetary science institute, seasonal changes, switzerland, thawing, transient grooves, tucson, university, university of bern

PASADENA, Calif. — Researchers using NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter see seasonal changes on far-northern Martian sand dunes caused by warming of a winter blanket of frozen carbon dioxide.

Earth has no naturally frozen carbon dioxide, though pieces of manufactured carbon-dioxide ice, called “dry ice,” sublime directly from solid to gas on Earth, just as the vast blankets of dry ice do on Mars. A driving factor in the springtime changes where seasonal coverings of dry ice form on Mars is that thawing occurs at the underside of the ice sheet, where it is in contact with dark ground being warmed by early-spring sunshine through translucent ice. The trapped gas builds up pressure and breaks out in various ways. (more…)

Microbial life on Mars: Could Saltwater Make it Possible?

By Guest PostAugust 19, 2011Scienceair pressure, antarctic lakes, atmospheres, bruce block, carbon dioxide, daily and seasonal cycles, earth, forms of microbial life, gregory dick, gulf of mexico, mars, Mars Phoenix Lander, mars today, microbe, microbial life, NASA, nilton renno, organisms, perchlorate salts, salt loving extremophile microorganisms, saltwater on mars, sea level, temperatures, the centro de astrobiologia in madrid, the university of georgia, united states, university of michigan, university of texas at dallas, water vapor

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— How common are droplets of saltwater on Mars? Could microbial life survive and reproduce in them? A new million-dollar NASA project led by the University of Michigan aims to answer those questions.

This project begins three years after beads of liquid brine were first photographed on one of the Mars Phoenix lander’s legs.

“On Earth, everywhere there’s liquid water, there is microbial life,” said Nilton Renno, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences who is the principal investigator. Researchers from NASA, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Georgia and the Centro de Astrobiologia in Madrid are also involved. (more…)

Tag Archives: mars today

Ancient Minerals: Which Gave Rise to Life?

Thawing ‘Dry Ice’ Drives Groovy Action on Mars

Microbial life on Mars: Could Saltwater Make it Possible?