Rare Water-Rich Mars Meteorite Discovered 71
astroengine writes "A rare Martian meteorite recently found in Morocco contains minerals with 10 times more water than previously discovered Mars meteorites, a finding that raises new questions about when and how long the planet most like Earth in the solar system had conditions suitable for life. The meteorite, known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, is the second-oldest of 110 named stones originating from Mars that have been retrieved on Earth. Purchased from a Moroccan meteorite dealer in 2011, the black, baseball-sized stone, which weighs less than 1 pound, is 2.1 billion years old, meaning it formed during what is known as the early Amazonian era in Mars' geologic history. 'It's from a time on Mars that we actually don't know much about,' geologist Carl Agee, with the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, told Discovery News."
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Firstly, we probe for much much more than just water.
Secondly, we don't get more information from looking at a rock in Africa. We get some information, and it's different from the information we get from Mars itself.
Thirdly, this is from very early Mars history. It's very different to current Mars.
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
Without the money spent on probes (and, in particular, without the Apollo Lunar samples and the Viking Mars descent mass spectrometer), we wouldn't know that this was a Martian rock.
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Re:Ironic (Score:5, Funny)
We spend billions on probes, and get more information from looking at a rock in Africa.
Nice work NASA.
I imagine if we probed your ass we'd discover a passaage all the way across the Milky Way, perhaps?
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Funny)
We spend billions on probes, and get more information from looking at a rock in Africa.
Nice work NASA.
I imagine if we probed your ass we'd discover a pasaage all the way across the Milky Way, perhaps?
Or at least to Uranus.
Re:Ironic (Score:4, Funny)
We spend billions on probes, and get some complementary information from looking at a rock in Africa.
It's a bit like asking why we sent the Viking landers when we can see it's red from here.
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And to think we could have invested that entire $2b USD in one of our $multi-trillion USD wars, instead of squandering it on mere "science".
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Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup.
weee hooo (Score:5, Funny)
I'm put'n the trailer back on the rocket. It's time to colomonize me some mars!
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Crash it into the southern US. They need the water.
So (Score:2)
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How does someone become a meteorite dealer?
Go out in the desert and find some meteorites. Or, get to be a good friend with someone who does.
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Re:So (Score:4, Informative)
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There's a good recent book about the history of meteorite collecting (and dealing), if you're really interested. The Fallen Sky [tucsoncitizen.com] by Christopher Cokinos. He chronicles the activities of a couple of very active meteorite dealers of the 20th century - they would mostly rush to the sites of recent falls and look around or buy pieces from local people who find them.
That sounds about as interesting as a history of the now legendary Keswick Pencil Museum.
Job title - Moroccan Meteorite Dealer. (Score:2)
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Hang out with dinosaurs
Obviously a highly advanced civilzation. (Score:2)
NWA (Score:3, Funny)
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Northwest Africa (NWA)
Africa's pretty big. It helps to divide it up.
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And had been the geographic designation for North West Africa for far longer. Just because a hip hop group couldn't come up with their own acronym doesn't mean it's wrong to use it in a setting it had already been in use for generations.
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I'm pretty sure the group was named after the airline anyway.
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Sigh. Venus gets no love. Ironic, isn't it?
Some questions (Score:2, Interesting)
The article is very short on explanations. For instance:
1/ When they say 'Martian meteorite' do they mean that it actually came from the surface of mars or rather than it's general origin was near to the orbit of mars?
2/ What guarantees are there that this rock is actually from mars?
3/ If so, how can you explain the parent meteor escaping the gravity well of mars? If this piece of rock is about a kilogram, then its entry mass must have been be quite large. The meteorite in California that was tracked with r
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Nah, I think it would be more like talking about meteorites from Mars and explaining whether the meteorite was from Mars.
Re:Some questions (Score:4, Informative)
Funny that you can find a link to something that implies the claim is false... but that you can't be bothered to google on "martian meteorite [google.com]"... and if you did do so, you'd see one of the related searches is "how do martian meteorites get to earth [google.com]".
Skepticism is useful, but get off your dead ass and be an informed skeptic rather than an ignoramus.
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Well I do happen to know something of the topic, but thank you for your snide remarks. "Look it up" is the classic defense of a sectarian, not a scientist.
Quoting from an article you can read here : http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0204346.pdf [arxiv.org]
[page 4]
"Two major mechanisms of impact-related meteorite ejection from Mars have been proposed: (1) acceleration of fragments by a shock wave in the solid rock... and (2) acceleration of fragments by the gas produced in a strong impact (which can be oblique).
One should b
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From the questions you asked, that's not immediately obvious. In fact, from the questions you asked you appeared to be completely ignorant of the topic.
Had I been defending something, you'd have a point. What I was doing was answering your questions - something to which "here's the relevant links" is a completely valid answer. But it looks like you're not interested in answers.
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The questions I proposed were not completely without foundation, and you noticed that I actually quoted an article. If you search Google you will get mostly fluff reponses like the article with no real arguments on the dynamic mechanisms that allow us to state that this particular rock actually came from Mars. The links you gave were not answers but just magical hand-waving: "look it up on Google, here are links" . Those links don't answer the objections.
The only real argument that can establish the non-ear
Two questions... (Score:2)
1. How do we know that a rock is from Mars, especially when its composition is different from what we've found on Mars to date.
2. How do rocks leave Mars' gravity well in the first place? Are they shrapnel from Mars being hit by big meteorites?
Re:Two questions... (Score:5, Informative)
1. How do we know that a rock is from Mars, especially when its composition is different from what we've found on Mars to date.
Isotope ratios and certain element ratios. These depend on the history of a planetary body, and you can rule out every planet / asteroid but Mars. I always liked the conclusion in this paper [sciencedirect.com] :
There seems little likelihood that the SNCs are not from Mars. If they were from another planetary body, it would have to be substantially identical to Mars
Of course, there is no such other Mars in the solar system.
The existence and composition of little atmospheric inclusions (i.e., tiny little bits of Martian air trapped in the rock) were another convincing piece of evidence for the Mars meteorites, as was the evidence of alteration by water.
2. How do rocks leave Mars' gravity well in the first place? Are they shrapnel from Mars being hit by big meteorites?
In a way. Suppose you have a big meteor hit (the size of the one that formed the Baringer Meteor Crater, or bigger). The meteor drills into the body and goes beneath the surface. At some point, it is stopped, and it dumps its kinetic energy into the body of the planet (i.e., for big impacts the meteorite explodes at depth). The shock wave is roughly spherical, and so the part directed upwards lifts up the surface above where the meteorite hit. Most of this material is lifted not much more than the depth of the explosion, forming the characteristic lip of the crater, and typically turning the layers in the rock upside down at the lip. Some of this material can be accelerated to much higher velocities, however, forming (for example) the rays of the new craters on the Moon. If the meteorite is really big, some of the surface material is accelerated to escape velocity and away it goes. After a little while (a few dozen to no more than a million years), some material will hit another planet. Mars and Earth have been trading material like this for the life of the solar system.
The really amazing thing is that some of the material ejected is not treated too roughly. Spores and seeds etc. could definitely survive the trip.
Re:Two questions... (Score:4, Interesting)
sounds a little BS to me
"and you can rule out every planet / asteroid but Mars"
where is this catalog of every single asteroid to ever come close to earth since creation of earth?
The list of asteroids with an atmosphere and liquid water is rather short (as in, non-existant). That also rules out Venus and Mercury. The isotope data rules out the Earth (or the Moon). These arguments also rule out the Jovian satellites and stuff further out. Conversely, other isotope data make it clear these objects do come from within the solar system somewhere.
This was all argued out at length in the 1980's and there were many skeptics, but they were eventually convinced. I remember being at a debate in Paris where one of the leading skeptics was reduced to saying that, although these came from a body very much like Mars, and not like any other solar system body, that didn't prove they are from Mars. That was about when he lost me. Now, this is regarded as well established and not controversial at all.
"At some point, it is stopped"
yea when its out of energy genius
It has to get vaporized first.
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Look for the label "Made on Mars".
We must be doing it wrong (Score:1)
We spend $2 billion on a Mars rover, and then Wham!, a Mars rock lands on somebody's ass.
Meanwhile, On Mars... (Score:5, Funny)
Probes (Score:1)
When the Martians come here to do their anal probes, are they looking for water?
Just asking!
Venus (Score:2)
Venus is most like Earth in the solar system, not Mars.
Meteorite Dealer? (Score:2)
> Purchased from a Moroccan meteorite dealer in 2011
How do I get a job like that? Does anyone know someone that needs a house clearance or some such that may pop up a couple of meteorites I could stick on Ebay?
(I'll name all my meteorites after music acts: NWA 7034, The Rolling Stones 2309, The meteorite formerly known as Prince 3476...)
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Call for Technology: Asteroid Attraction (Score:1)
WHEREAS we have spent an incredible amount of money sending probes to Mars looking for traces of water only to find it on a meteorite that has impacted Earth;
WHEREAS an inordinate amount of science has been conducted by lazy couch potato researchers utilizing passive methods of data collection of the cosmos, and this phenomenon in combination with illicit 64oz 'Big Gulp' sales has resulted in an epidemic of obesity among our revered scientists;
WHEREAS several years' drought have reduced the yield of the ann