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The first surface of Mars consisting of an ocean of liquid magma has crystallized extremely rapidly, only 20 million years after the formation of the solar system. Subsequently, a solid crust appeared on the red planet, potentially harboring oceans with water and life.
This is an artistic representation intended to illustrate the early solidification and formation of the Earth's crust on Mars. Credit: Institute of Physics of the Globe of Paris
The meteorite Mars Black Beauty has literally brought crisp news to the Earth. The formation of crusts is an important step in the development of telluric planets, and what makes Black Beauty special and expensive is that it contains small fragments of the Martian crust. Specifically, Black Beauty contains rare mineral zircon, in which the researchers found a high concentration of hafnium.
"Zircon is a very strong mineral that is ideal for providing absolute ages, and in this context, zircons can be used to establish a time frame for understanding the history of the formation of the Martian crust," explains Professor Martin Bizzarro, and continues:
"Zircon also acts as a small time capsule. the environment where and when it was created. In this case, a time capsule with hafnium that comes from the oldest crust of Mars, which was present about 100 million years before the creation of the oldest zircon of Black Beauty. Thus, Mars took an early departure from the Earth, whose solid crust did not form until much later.
However, it took a certain courage to achieve this result.
We crushed the meteorite
The heavy meteorite Black Beauty of 319.8 grams was found in the desert of the Sahara in 2011. It quickly became clear that the meteorite was something special and that she currently has a selling price of about $ 10,000 per gram.A year ago, the professor Martin Bizzarro has managed to acquire 44 grams of Black Beauty with the help of various funding agencies and the exchange of meteorites from the museum's collection.
One of the big challenges is that the Black Beauty zircons are extremely small, which required a courageous strategy: "We crushed our precious meteorite, or to be precise: we crushed 5 grams," says Martin Bizzarro and continues:
"Today, I'm glad we chose this strategy He released seven zircons, one of which is the oldest known zircon of Mars. And from the zircons and their hafnium content, we can now conclude that the crystallization of the surface of Mars has become extremely fast: already 20 million years after the formation of the solar system, Mars had a solid crust that could potentially harbor the oceans and perhaps also life. "
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