& # 39; CSI Martian & # 39; reveals how the asteroid impacts created running water beneath the red planet

The modern analysis of Martian meteorites has revealed unprecedented details about how the impact of asteroids helps to create temporary sources of running water on the red planet.

This study helps to clarify the potential location of the impact crater on the Martian surface, which projected some of these Martian rocks into space millions of years ago.

The results are the result of a kind of "Martian CSI" that uses sophisticated techniques to reconstruct the major events that have shaped the rock since its formation on Mars about 1.4 billion years ago.

The paper, titled "Boom boom pow: Aqueous alteration facilitated by shock and evidence of two shock events in Martian Nakhlite meteorites," is published in Progress of science. The research was funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

In the new article, planetary scientists from the University of Glasgow and their colleagues from Leeds, Italy, Australia, and Sweden describe how they used a technique called backscatter diffraction. electrons to examine slices of two different Martian meteorites, called "nakhlites".

The nakhlites are a group of volcanic Martian meteorites named El Nakhla in Egypt, where the first of them fell to Earth in 1911. Interestingly, these meteorites testify to the action of the Liquid water on the Martian surface about 633 million years ago. However, the process that generated these fluids has been a mystery until now.

Dr. Luke Daly, an associate scientist in solar systems science at the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow, is the lead author.

Dr. Daly said: "There is a huge amount of information on Mars locked up in the small pieces of the red planet that have fallen on Earth in the form of meteorites, to which new analytical techniques can enable us to see. 39; access.

"By applying this electron backscattering diffraction technique, we were able to look very closely at the orientation and deformation of minerals over the entire surface of these Martian rock samples in order to search for patterns.

"What we have seen is that the model of deformation in the minerals corresponds exactly to the distribution of the veins of alteration that have formed from the Martian fluids." This coincidence provides us with exciting data on two major events in the history of these rocks.The first is that about 633 million years ago, they were hit by an asteroid that turned them into a part of an impact crater.

"This impact was large enough and hot enough to melt the ice under the Martian surface and send it through the newly formed cracks in the rock, thus forming a temporary hydrothermal system beneath the surface of Mars, which altered the mineral composition The rocks, close to these cracks, suggest that an asteroidal impact was the mysterious mechanism of the generation of liquid water in the nakhlites long after the disappearance of the volcano that had formed them on March.

"The second interesting thing that is told to us is that the rocks had to be hit twice.A second impact about 11 million years ago had the right combination of angle and strength to blow up the rocks from the surface of the planet and start their long journey through space to Earth ".

The team believes that their findings provide new information on the formation of the Martian landscape. The regular bombardment of asteroids could have had similar effects on underground ice during the course of Martian history, creating temporary hydrothermal systems all over the planet and important sources of liquid water .

Their analysis also provides important clues that could help pinpoint the origin of the nakhlites on Mars.

"We are currently trying to understand the Martian geology through these meteorites without knowing what part of the surface of Mars these so-called nakhlites came from.Our new discoveries narrowly limit the possible origins of nakhlites.We now know that we are looking for a volcanic building complex, 1.3 to 1.4 billion years old, with a crater about 633 million years old and another about 11 million years old, and very few places on Mars could . "

"It's an interplanetary detective job that's still going on, but we're looking forward to solving the case."

Researchers from the University of Glasgow, University of Leeds, University of Uppsala, Oxford Nanoanalysis of Oxford Instruments, the University of University of Pisa, University of New South Wales and Curtin University examined samples of two nakhlites.

One, known as Miller Range 03346, was discovered and found in the Miller Mountains Mountains in Antarctica in 2003 by the Antarctic Search for Meteorites expedition. Professor Gretchen Benedix, co-author of this study, was part of the expedition that helped recover the Miller Range 03346. The second, "Lafayette", was found in the collection of rock samples from Purdue University in 1931.