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Space Science

Martian Rock Found In Morocco 203

Posted by simoniker from the red-planet-visits-here dept.
daeley writes "The BBC is reporting that a rock found in 2001 in Morocco is originally from Mars, similar in composition to the 1977 Antartica find. 'The meteorite would have been blasted off the Red Planet by an impact and may hold clues to Mars' watery past... scientists say the fragments are magmatic rocks. Magmatism is the main process by which water moves from the core of planets to their surface.'"
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Martian Rock Found In Morocco More

Martian Rock Found In Morocco

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  • That explains it (Score:2, Informative)

    by tarzan353 ( 246515 )

    I ask one question, could this rock not have come from the same source as the billions of rocks that litter the martian surface? I.E. somewhere other than Mars.

    Two reasons for suspecting they originated on Mars:

    Martian meteorites come in a range of ages - some as young as a billion years old. By comparison, most meteorites hang out around the 4.6 billion years old mark - the point when small planetary bodies were forming in the Solar System.

    For rocks to be much younger than 4.6 billion they have to

    • Re:That explains it (Score:5, Informative)

      by bad_fx ( 493443 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:32PM (#8052130) Journal
      Uh...Nice cut and paste [slashdot.org]. Maybe you should think of something original next time.
      • check out http://www.google.com/search?q=Python+would+be+a+r etrograde+choice.&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0& start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

        and compare with:
        http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93598&c id=8034 340

        mike seems to be a habitual copier. marked as foe very soon.

    • Re:That explains it (Score:5, Funny)

      by mars_rover ( 741702 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:33PM (#8052138) Journal
      That's odd... the piece of Mars I have on my desk is composed of entirely different substances: Milk Solids (40%), cocoa, emulsifiers, caramel, glucose etc. Scientists believe that it came from the Mare Saccharum region on Mars...

    • Re:That explains it (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Two reasons for suspecting they originated on Mars

      It never ceases to amaze me that in the world of "science" that theory is most always talked of as proven fact. If the probability that object x doesn't exist is 80%, that object is talked about as if it doesn't exist conclusively, even though the possiblity that it exists is in the other 20%t. The age of the universe is a good example. Scientist y estimates to to being x Billion years old, and every textbook, news article, journal, documentary, etc state

      • > It never ceases to amaze me that in the world of "science" that theory is most always talked of as proven fact. If the probability that object x doesn't exist is 80%, that object is talked about as if it doesn't exist conclusively, even though the possiblity that it exists is in the other 20%t. The age of the universe is a good example. Scientist y estimates to to being x Billion years old, and every textbook, news article, journal, documentary, etc states that the universe is x billion years old as i

      • Re:That explains it (Score:3, Insightful)

        by instarx ( 615765 )
        What you are calling "science" is really science reporting. Science reporting summarizes the real science and leaves out the qualifiers and statistical information from the original published peer-reviewed work. Science reporting frequently offers broad and sweeping conclusions of hard fact from original work that only reports on evidence that such a conclusion may be true. Even science textbooks are basically summaries of the original research and omit the nuances. Science reporting is a hollow shell of r
    • 3rd reason...Because it has "Made in Mars" stamped on the bottom.

  • So after sending Spirit millions of miles... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <bc90021.bc90021@net> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:17PM (#8052022) Homepage
    ...we find another Martian rock here on Earth. For those of you that don't think fate doesn't have a sense of irony, I think that this story proves it. ;)

  • Why go to Mars? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Obviously it's a waste to be spending so much on sending robots to Mars. Why not send the robots to Morocco instead? Talk about saving money on airfare!
    • Some of the conspiracy theorists would probably have you believe we did :-)
    • Obviously it's a waste to be spending so much on sending robots to Mars. Why not send the robots to Morocco instead? Talk about saving money on airfare!

      Heck, I'll even make you a better deal: send me to Morocco for just a fraction of the cost of your multi-million dollar robot.

  • Cool! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ZipR ( 584654 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:18PM (#8052025)
    Instead of us having to go to Mars, Mars is coming to us!

  • Magmatism (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Magmatism is the main process by which water moves from the core of planets to their surface.
    You mean volcanos just spew out water? Woo-hoo! Time to move to Hawaii!!

  • Magmatism (Score:3, Funny)

    by deuist ( 228133 ) <ryanaycock@ g m a i l .com> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:20PM (#8052039) Homepage
    "Magmatism is the main process by which water moves from the core of planets to their surface."

    I thought that magnetism was a process that involved two pieces of metal being attracted to each other. Oh, you said magmatism ...

    • Wow, what if martian rocks contained some sort of magnetic component and the scientists studying those rocks wanted to analyze them in a practical, rational manner? Would that be magmatism magnetism pragmatism?

      Wow...that was awful. -1, sucky jokex0r

  • I found a rock in my backyard which is composed of material originating from the sun.

    Amazing!
    • FYI the sun is made out of hydrogen.

      For once, Obvious Guy isn't :)

    • Perhaps you mean another, now defunct, Sun.

      Ours is still made of Hydrogen.

      • Re:A rock found in my backyard (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:45AM (#8052399) Journal
        Perhaps you mean another, now defunct, Sun. Ours is still made of Hydrogen.

        Almost every piece of matter on Earth came from defunct Suns (stars) what exploded at the end of their lives. The very monitor you are staring at is left-over star boom boom. It is suspected that heavy elements like gold came from supernovas or hypernovas, really big stars with really big booms, the kind that can outshine entire galaxies for a few days or weeks. So next time you see a gold ring, realize that it came from the largest kind of explosions known in the entire universe. Booms beyond human comprehension.
        • Oh, so *that's* what they're doing over at Edwards AFB this morning (much BOOM-BOOMing going on) -- turning hydrogen into gold! All the alchemists will be SOOOO jealous. ;)

  • water at the core? Ummm, no. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:21PM (#8052054) Journal
    The core of a planet is too hot and dense for water.

    AFAIK, the parent is wrong.

    RS

    • Well obviously you haven't seen The Phantom Menace. Of course a planet's core can be made of water!!!

      I swear, some people just don't *pay attention*.

    • Re:water at the core? Ummm, no. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by adlai ( 469308 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:31PM (#8052121)
      Yeah, I saw the "magmatism is the main process by which water moves from the core of planets to their surface" thing and coughed quietly to myself *cough* *cough*.

      Core differentiation generally happens REALLY early in planet's history, and it seems to me that it isn't precisely correct to say magmatism in this context, (which implies "volcanism" at least to me). Bouyancy and heat are what really moves water to the surface, since it is a) much less dense than rock (think about it) and b) not real stable at real high T.

      In other words -- what moves water around is a whole mess of ugly chemistry and thermodynamics that I'll leave to my petrologist buddies to explain to me (dah? dah!) with odd pentagonal diagrams.

    • Re:water at the core? Ummm, no. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by toxic666 ( 529648 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @02:46AM (#8052623)
      Oh, you have no idea how well you summed up the petrology of this meterorite:

      "It is described as a peridotite, an extremely rare type of Mars rock consisting of the minerals olivine, pyroxene and plagioclase glass."

      This beastie originated near the mantle, at great depth. And there is NO water down there. If the meteorite contains water, it may be from Mars, but it may also be contamination from earth.

      I've seen zero evidence for either, and after NASA claimed they had proof of Mars life in a meteorite, I will accept no evidence until validated by and outside lab.

  • War of the Worlds (Score:4, Funny)

    by grungebox ( 578982 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:21PM (#8052059) Homepage
    Maybe those rocks are the results of primitive Martian interplanetary weapons tests. After all, they have to make sure mere rocks can make it here before they send plasma-nuclear-hyper-transmogrifying-death bombs, right?

    Oh geez, I better load up on duct tape if the fucking Martians are coming.

    • Actually, the rock was a martian probe that didn't land so well. You think WE are the only ones tired of loosing probes? Mars had thier own Polar Lander, and look how that fared.
    • Nah, it's just the testing phase for a bigger version. They don't need plasma-nuclear-hyper-transmogrifying-death bombs if they can scale their rock thrower up to a big enough size because really large rocks moving at interplantary speeds is just as effective at killing as the much more expensive plasma-nuclear-hyper-transmogrifying-death bombs. See that's why the rock is magnetic, the mass driver has to use ferous materials =)
    • That's it, then... Indisputable proof, that the Martianians have Weppons of Mass Distruction... >

  • It's only fair... (Score:5, Funny)

    by QSO_Wizard ( 689766 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:22PM (#8052063)
    the Earth is littering Mars with spacecraft debris. Mars just wants a little payback.

  • More importantly... (Score:4, Funny)

    by paul248 ( 536459 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:22PM (#8052068) Homepage
    Did they find Beagle 2 on it?
  • So, how is it we know the rocks from the Atlas mountains are from Mars, yet the Discovery Channel says Mars Soil Surprises Scientists: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040119/mars soil.html

  • So? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by toxic666 ( 529648 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:27PM (#8052091)
    We have rovers on Mars collecting data that has no chance of being contaminated by a meteorite impact, travel through space and terrestrial processes.

    I'll take data from the horse's mouth.

    Rock on, Rovers!
    • Of course there is a chance, albeit small, that a rock from Earth will hit the rovers and contaminate them. Good thing we sent two.
      • Uhhh, yeah. That rover we have on the surface just happened to have been hit by a high kinetic energy earth rock before its perfectly successful, landing. And the meteorite did no damage.

        Can you share some of the stuff you and Daryl have been smoking? Must be real good. Just make sure my friends c-c-c-cut me off be-e-e-fore I get p-p-p-paranoid and d-d-d-delusional.
    • Now, I'm not saying that the rovers aren't doing good, important geological science. However, the range of tests that can be done on a rock in an Earth-based laboratory totally dwarfs anything on either rover. Plus, it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

      • Re:So? (Score:3, Funny)

        by toxic666 ( 529648 )
        What is a hell of a lot cheaper?

        Flying Mars rocks back to earth? Flying an kewl earth lab, all its equipent and employees to Mars? Flying people to Mars to collect rocks and bring them back to earth?

        PLEASE send me some of the 'shrooms you ate before posting that comment.
        • What is a hell of a lot cheaper?

          Analyzing meteorites from Mars in an Earthside laboratory is a hell of a lot cheaper than sending a probe to Mars. I believe this was obvious from the context.

      • Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by toxic666 ( 529648 )
        OK, I got a bit bitchy.

        The point is, the specimen is contaminated and only limited samples are available. NASA held out the "Life on Mars" sample until its outrageous conclusions were forced into the public eye. They tried to prohibit peer review. Once a rare sample is set aside as untouchable, forget about validation.

        We'll be getting important data from validated samples from the rovers and that data will be available to all for peer review.

  • Suspicious.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ironica ( 124657 ) <pixel@boo[ ]ck.org ['ndo' in gap]> on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:28PM (#8052101) Journal
    From the article: The team that found it was led by experienced meteorite hunters Carine Bidaut and Bruno Fectay, who have now found six rocks from Mars - a record.

    Interesting that they seem to know *just* where to find Martian rocks.

    Quick! Get them! They're Martian spies!
    • Meteorite hunters?

      "Crikey! It looks like we got us 'ere another Martian rock! Dange'! Dange'!"

      I don't suppose Carine or Bruno brought a baby along, did they?

    • Re:Suspicious.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dublin ( 31215 )
      From the article: The team that found it was led by experienced meteorite hunters Carine Bidaut and Bruno Fectay, who have now found six rocks from Mars - a record.

      Interesting that they seem to know *just* where to find Martian rocks.
      It's also really interesting that the last big hoo-rah about finding "a rock from Mars" here on Earth coincided with Bush Sr's proposal for a mission to Mars. What's really amazing is that these discoveries are so strongly correlated to Congressional consideration of tens
  • "Carine Bidaut and Bruno Fectay hold rocks from Mars" That girl's pretty hot! She can hold my rocks any day. Bruno, however, can keep holding his own. [Sorry, I originally AC'd this by accident.]

  • Dang... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Kenja ( 541830 )
    Dang, I was wondering where I left that. Wonder what type of paper work I would need to do to get it back.

  • I wonder if... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jarwulf ( 530523 )
    Bacteria are particularly tough and anaeorobic species can surivive in the interior of rocks for an obscenely long amount of time without access to outside nutrients. Maybe sometime in the primordial past an impact could have sent one rock plummeting to mars. The planet is seeded...suprise...
    • Bacteria are particularly tough and anaeorobic species can surivive in the interior of rocks for an obscenely long amount of time without access to outside nutrients. Sounds like the boffins Bill has locked up in Redmond coding Longhorn...

  • circumstances regarding how it got here (Score:4, Interesting)

    by plasm4 ( 533422 ) on Wednesday January 21, 2004 @11:49PM (#8052200) Journal
    the distance from the earth to mars, at its closest is more than 55 million kilometers (33 million miles). the article states that about 20 such rocks have been found on earth so far. It seems that Mar at some point must have undergone some pretty serious bombardment from asteroids, and big ones too it seems, if the impacts caused martian rock to leave its gravitational field, and come all the way to earth. It seems like trying to throw a dart at an ant from 100 yards
    • That would be difficult, but when you throw hundreds or even thousands of darts, some most likely will hit.
    • Yes, all terrestrial planets in the solar system (excpet Venus, which appears to undergo periodic resurfacing, erasing old impact craters) show evidence of a period of extremely heavy bombardment in their early histories, about 3 billion years ago. This is why the lunar highlands are so much more heavily cratered than the mare (lava floodplains formed sometime after the heavy bombardment period). If you've got pictures of the moon handy, the "dark side" is primarily the heavily cratered highlands, while t

    • Re:circumstances regarding how it got here (Score:4, Informative)

      by Paul Cameron ( 3633 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @04:46AM (#8053062) Homepage
      It seems like trying to throw a dart at an ant from 100 yards
      Your analogy is flawed.
      1. You're ignoring gravity, the rock hits Earth partly because the earth is altering it's trajectory
      2. If the rock does not directly hit Earth, the two can swing around the sun and try again. The rock won't necessarily fly out of the solar system

    • It probably happened when our Martian ancestors nuked the 5th planet for manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. THat plan totally backfired. LUckily, they had already settled the third planet...

    • Even a single impact of good size is bound to throw up a lot of rock, so even dismissing Earth's gravity and the fact that even if they miss, there's a change of hitting again later, it's more like shooting the ant with a machine gun.

      There are probably much more martian rocks here than these few, it's not like finding them or recognizing them as martian is easy - and the smaller ones have disintegrated in atmosphere.

  • What's next (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @12:09AM (#8052239) Homepage
    What's next? Are we now going to find out that the rocks being analyzed by Spirit are actually from earth?
    • However unlikely, it is entirely possible to find such a rock... the kicker would be finding a dinosaur fossil from earth on Mars!

      • Re:It is possible... (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        No, the real kicker would be Spirit driving over a hill and seeing a half-buried Statue of Liberty.

        As they say in the movies, "YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!"

    • Re:What's next (Score:4, Informative)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:18AM (#8052352) Journal
      What's next? Are we now going to find out that the rocks being analyzed by Spirit are actually from earth?

      It is easier for Mars debri to transfer to Earth than the other way around because of the stronger gravity on Earth. I read somewhere that Earth's gravity is on the borderline of being too strong to allow rocks to escape via meteor impact. One might say that some impacts are much stronger than others so that fast ones might still do it. However, past a certain impact energy, ejected material vaporizes such that there are no projectiles left.

      In other words, too slow and rocks cannot reach escape velocity. Too fast and rocks vaporize from the heat of the impact. The middle "just right" window may not exist, or barely exist on Earth, but is relatively wide on Mars because of lower gravity.

      Thus, if there are Earth rocks on Mars, there will be far far fewer compared to the other way around.
    • James Brolin, Sam Waterston, OJ, and Spirit run across the desert for their lives....
  • Just WHAT exactly was that rock doing there, and was it covered by little green lichens?
  • may hold clues to Mars' watery past... scientists say the fragments are magmatic rocks.

    Heck, they'd even more clues to Mars' water past if they were sedimentary rocks...

    Igneous, Holmes!
    Sedimentary, my dear Watson.

  • Memo (Score:5, Funny)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Thursday January 22, 2004 @01:51AM (#8052423)
    Better turn down the power on Spirit's drive wheels.

  • I would have loved to send this rock into NASA. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I would have loved to send this rock into Nasa's new rock collecting program, which allows kids to compare their rocks to those on mars by having them analyzed by the same instruments used by the rover.

    http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/k-4/fe at ures/F_Schoolhouse_Rocks.html

    Do you think NASA would give a kid back a rock it found to be from Mars?
  • This sounds like marvellous, just like the story on "the first piece of Mars" found in Antarctica.

    1. If a metorite hits Mars it has a tremendeous speed, melting and/or vaporising anything in its vicinity.

    2. Imagine that piece of molten Martian rock actually surpassing the gravity of Mars...

    3. Imagine that piece of by now deep frozen rock actually hitting a Sun-orbiting Earth...

    4. Imagine that piece of now frozen dirt entering the Earth's atmosphere, heating up again...

    5. Imagine that now molten piece o
    • The team that found it was led by experienced meteorite hunters Carine Bidaut and Bruno Fectay, who have now found six rocks from Mars - a record.

      9. Imagine this all happening not with one piece of nothingness, but six disctinct pieces, all miraculously found by the same two people.

      • Re:This sounds like BS (Score:3, Insightful)

        by PhuCknuT ( 1703 )
        Imagine a large asteroid hitting mars. There will be BILLIONS of pieces sent into an orbit similar to mars, many of which will then be gravtationally tossed into other orbits by mars itself. It's not hard to imagine many many of these eventually landing on earth within the billion years or so since then.

        There are alot more than 6 pieces that have been found, these two people just happen to collect ALOT of meteorites and happen to know how to recognize a martian one. Of course it sounds like too much coi
  • I'm not sure I buy that most of the water on a planet comes from inside the planet.

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/01/990 10 6080737.htm

    Do geologists account for water being added? Or, for that matter, water being lost through evaporation? I've always wondered if water in the upper atmosphere could dissasociate. The H+ ions are too weak to be held by the earth's gravity, and could 'boil' off.
  • I think Beagle is now on its final communication stages. None of the conventional ones worked, now he's throwing rocks at us.
  • how they can reasonably know this is a piece of mars?

    I know millions of years brings the event into statistical probability, but I have my doubts.

    How do they know for sure?
  • Maybe it was blasted into space by an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator?

    I would really love to see Marvin Martian in one of the Spirit pictures!

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