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According to Mars, a team of Caltech geochemists and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory could be responsible for the dissolved oxygen in a liquid groundwater.
Mars captured by the viking orbiter.Credit: NASA / JPL / USGS
Their findings, recently published in the journal Nature Geoscienceseem to overturn the long-held view that the red planet was largely devoid of molecular oxygen and, in turn, any biological aerobic activity that could bring life.
"This completely changes our understanding of the potential livability of the old and modern March," said JPL geochemist Vlada Stamenković, lead author of the newspaper.
For the first time ever, says Stamenković, we understand that dissolved oxygen, a molecule essential to the evolution of life on Earth, could be available on Mars in sufficient quantities to support aerobic life.
Stamenković says their findings mean that in theory, aerobic microbes could exist in the Martian subsoil today.
But there is still so much we do not know about the Martian basement. "There is underground water and details on the chemistry of the subsoil," says Stamenković.
These questions will only be solved when new dedicated instruments are in place to understand everything in situ.
But Stamenkovic says that these Questions about Mars' water balance go beyond simple science .
"This is also important for human exploration of Mars and commercial companies like SpaceX wanting to travel to Mars," Stamenković said.
She added that the search for existing life was closely related to resources such as ice, liquid water and other volatile substances, information that it is necessary to obtain for to allow human beings to live on the red planet.
Beyond March, Stamenković said the team's results gave new hope that life could access oxygen without resorting to oxygen photosynthesis. This, she says, will be important for potentially more water-rich and colder planets, such as some planets from the TRAPPIST-1 extrasolar planetary system, which could benefit from these O2 opportunities.
Caltech reports that the team was surprised to find that March at a sufficiently low altitude (where the atmosphere is the thickest) and at a sufficiently low temperature (where gases such as oxygen have easier to stay in a liquid solution), an unexpected amount of oxygen could exist in the water.
Before this study, the hypothesis was that the scarcity of oxygen molecules in the Martian atmosphere would also mean their scarcity on the subsoil. However, the team's badysis of geochemical evidence from Martian meteorites and manganese-rich rocks indicates highly oxidative aqueous environments on Mars in its past, the authors note. This, they note, implies that O2 has also played a role in the chemical aging of the Martian crust.
This new take in the context of what geochemists know about the Earth suggests that Mars may have had more oxygen than the Earth at the beginning . This is because oxygen became dominant on Earth only 2.35 billion years ago, or after the emergence of oxygen photosynthesis, Stamenković says.
Thus, the surprising result is that there may be more dissolved oxygen in Martian brines than on the early Earth, says Stamenković. This is before the so-called Great Oxygenation (GOE) of the Earth. This, she says, gives new hope for life on Mars and beyond for oceanic worlds such as Europa and Enceladus, where oxygen can be generated in an abiotic way.
But the solution to these questions is to design dedicated instruments to explore the Martian subsoil in search of traces of liquid water.
What is the most important in this discovery?
This oxygen could exist in sufficient quantity to support not only microbial life, but also simple animals, such as sponges, says Stamenković.
"Life may have had different opportunities for life on Mars than on Earth," Stamenković said.
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According to Mars, a team of Caltech geochemists and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory could be responsible for the dissolved oxygen in a liquid groundwater.
Mars captured by the viking orbiter.Credit: NASA / JPL / USGS
Their findings, recently published in the journal Nature Geoscienceseem to overturn the long-held view that the red planet was largely devoid of molecular oxygen and, in turn, any biological aerobic activity that could bring life.
"This completely changes our understanding of the potential livability of the old and modern March," said JPL geochemist Vlada Stamenković, lead author of the newspaper.
For the first time ever, says Stamenković, we understand that dissolved oxygen, a molecule essential to the evolution of life on Earth, could be available on Mars in sufficient quantities to support aerobic life.
Stamenković says their findings mean that in theory, aerobic microbes could exist in the Martian subsoil today.
But there is still so much we do not know about the Martian basement. "There is underground water and details on the chemistry of the subsoil," says Stamenković.
These questions will only be solved when new dedicated instruments are in place to understand everything in situ.
But Stamenkovic says that these Questions about Mars' water balance go beyond simple science .
"This is also important for human exploration of Mars and commercial companies like SpaceX wanting to travel to Mars," Stamenković said.
She added that the search for existing life was closely related to resources such as ice, liquid water and other volatile substances, information that it is necessary to obtain for to allow human beings to live on the red planet.
Beyond March, Stamenković said the team's results gave new hope that life could access oxygen without resorting to oxygen photosynthesis. This, she says, will be important for potentially more water-rich and colder planets, such as some planets from the TRAPPIST-1 extrasolar planetary system, which could benefit from these O2 opportunities.
Caltech reports that the team was surprised to find that March at a sufficiently low altitude (where the atmosphere is the thickest) and at a sufficiently low temperature (where gases such as oxygen have easier to stay in a liquid solution), an unexpected amount of oxygen could exist in the water.
Before this study, the hypothesis was that the scarcity of oxygen molecules in the Martian atmosphere would also mean their scarcity on the subsoil. However, the team's badysis of geochemical evidence from Martian meteorites and manganese-rich rocks indicates highly oxidative aqueous environments on Mars in its past, the authors note. This, they note, implies that O2 has also played a role in the chemical aging of the Martian crust.
This new take in the context of what geochemists know about the Earth suggests that Mars may have had more oxygen than the Earth at the beginning . This is because oxygen became dominant on Earth only 2.35 billion years ago, or after the emergence of oxygen photosynthesis, Stamenković says.
Thus, the surprising result is that there may be more dissolved oxygen in Martian brines than on the early Earth, says Stamenković. This is before the so-called Great Oxygenation (GOE) of the Earth. This, she says, gives new hope for life on Mars and beyond for oceanic worlds such as Europa and Enceladus, where oxygen can be generated in an abiotic way.
But the solution to these questions is to design dedicated instruments to explore the Martian subsoil in search of traces of liquid water.
What is the most important in this discovery?
This oxygen could exist in sufficient quantity to support not only microbial life, but also simple animals, such as sponges, says Stamenković.
"Life may have had different opportunities for life on Mars than on Earth," Stamenković said.
