A long study has proven that the meteorite that caused a frenzy in the 1990s after many, including President Bill Clinton, claimed it could be evidence of life on Mars, is nothing more than a lump of rock and water.
A 4-billion-year-old piece of rock discovered in 1984 in Antarctica made headlines around the world after a NASA-led team claimed in 1996 that it contained microscopic fossils of bacteria, according to the Daily Mail.
Their claims prompted U.S. President Bill Clinton to immediately organize a televised press conference about what he said could be “one of the most amazing discoveries in our universe that science has ever made.”
Clinton said: “Its consequences are as far-reaching and impressive as one can imagine. While it promises answers to some of our oldest questions, it also raises other, even more fundamental questions.”
The President used these statements to justify further funding for America’s space program.
But even at the time, scientists were skeptical of NASA’s findings and questioned the hype around the apparent discovery.
And now they have been confirmed after researchers have spent decades studying the 4-pound stone in detail.
Experts from the Carnegie Institute of Science in Washington, DC, examined tiny meteorite samples and found that the carbon-rich compounds are actually the result of exposure to salt water flowing over the rock for an extended period of time.
According to the theory of scientists, the Martian rock broke off the surface of the Red Planet as a result of its collision with a large cosmic body about 4 billion years ago, after which it remained on Mars. Approximately one and a half dozen million years ago, as a result of a new shock, the stone ended up in space, and only 13 thousand years ago it fell into the Earth’s gravity field and fell on it.
The space body was found on December 27, 1984 in the Alan Hills in Antarctica. According to scientists, this is one of 34 Martian meteorites found on our planet. The mass of the meteorite is 1.93 kilograms. In 1996, the meteorite gained worldwide fame after NASA scientists announced that fossilized microscopic structures resembling fossilized bacteria were found in its material.
True, the scientific community has long questioned NASA’s initial findings, suggesting that organic compounds were created by something other than signs of life.
For this new study, a team of scientists analyzed the minerals in the meteorite using new methods and found that they are related to serpentine-like minerals. It is a dark green mineral associated with the once moist environment of early Mars when it first formed.
The researchers suggest that billions of years ago, Martian underground water, moving through cracks in the rocks, formed tiny balls of carbon.
This is what led some scientists in the 1990s to think that there was evidence of ancient Martian primitive life in an Antarctic meteorite. The same process of water moving through cracks could occur on Earth, they said, and could help explain the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere.
One process that may have taken place on young Mars is serpentinization, which occurs when iron- or magnesium-rich volcanic rocks interact with circulating water. This changes their mineral nature and produces hydrogen in the rock.
Another method that may have led to such discoveries is carbonization, which is the result of the reaction of rocks with acidic water containing dissolved carbon dioxide.
Organic compounds discovered by a NASA team in 1996 likely formed when volcanic rock on Mars interacted with salt water flowing over rock.
According to study lead author Andrew Steele, advances in technology have made his team’s new findings possible. He praised the measurements made by the original researchers and noted that their life-affirming hypothesis “was a reasonable interpretation” at the time. He said that he and his team, which includes American, German and British scientists, took care to present their results “as they are, which is a very exciting discovery about Mars, not a study to disprove” the original premise. .
The discovery is “huge for our understanding of how life began on this planet,” Steele explained, as well as whether life could have originated on early Mars. He added that this helps improve the methods we need to search for life elsewhere on Mars, Enceladus and Europa.”
There are already rovers on Mars looking for signs of life, with rovers sent from NASA and China, and another due to arrive from Europe next year. Future missions are expected to visit the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, as they are thought to contain massive moon-sized oceans under surface ice that could harbor living bacteria.
According to Andrew Steele, the only way to prove that there ever was or still is microbial life on Mars is to bring samples back to Earth for analysis.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has already collected six samples to return to Earth, and about three dozen are expected to be produced. They will be collected from the surface of the Red Planet as part of a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency and returned to Earth by 2030.
China and Japan also plan to visit the Red Planet in the coming decades and bring samples of Martian rock back to Earth for study.
A small piece of rock found in Antarctica on December 27, 1984 by a group of American meteorite hunters is one of the most studied in the world. Studies have shown that it was ejected from the surface of Mars in an asteroid collision about 17 million years ago, causing it to float through space on its way to our planet. It eventually crashed to Earth, landing in the Allan Hills in Antarctica about 13,000 years ago, where it remained intact. The small grey-green fragment gets its name – Allan Hills 84001 – from the mountains where it was found on the frozen continent.
The two scientists who took part in the original study disagreed with the latest findings, calling them “disappointing.”
In a joint email, Cathy Thomas-Keprta and Simon Clemett, astromaterials researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said they stand by their 1996 observations. “While the data presented are gradually adding to our knowledge of (the meteorite), the interpretation is hardly new and is not supported by the study,” they wrote. “Unconfirmed assumptions do nothing to solve the riddle associated with the origin of organic matter” in a meteorite.
.