NASA’s Mars rover has discovered conditions at the bottom of a lake on the Red Planet that dried up billions of years ago that could support life.
According to a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planetsastronomers analyzed data obtained by NASA’s Curiosity rover while exploring the floor of Gale Crater on Mars, where a water lake was located billions of years ago.
The rover found large amounts of manganese oxide in local rocks. This mineral is found on Earth in lakes where the right conditions exist for oxidation, resulting in the formation of manganese crystals in the presence of oxygen.
Scientists believe that Earth-like conditions were present in Lake Mars. This could mean that life could exist on Mars, but it is not yet clear how so much oxygen came to be on the planet.
Due to the large amount of oxygen on Earth, which is created by photosynthesis, manganese oxide forms on the banks of lakes. It also occurs because microbes help carry out manganese oxidation reactions.
But how such a large amount of manganese oxide was formed in Gale Crater is not clear. The fact is that so far no signs of the existence of extraterrestrial life have been discovered on the Red Planet, and the mechanism of creating oxygen on Mars still remains a mystery, scientists say.
There is a lot of manganese oxide on Earth and it is actively involved in biological processes. Almost all life on our planet needs manganese for one reason or another.
There isn’t much oxygen on Mars right now, so scientists are puzzled by how the same amount of manganese oxide formed on the Red Planet as the amount found in sedimentary rocks on Earth.
According to scientists, strong oxidation conditions are needed to create manganese oxide, which is why these minerals most likely formed in the lake when Mars had a lot of oxygen in its atmosphere.
Scientists say the lake on Mars was habitable for a long time because manganese oxide takes thousands of years to form. But until now, scientists don’t know exactly where so much oxygen on Mars came from. It is likely that oxygen was released from icy deposits when meteorites fell onto the Red Planet’s surface.
Scientists believe that if living microorganisms participated in the oxidation of manganese, traces of it may remain in rocks containing manganese.
