NASA's Curiosity Rover Discovers Yellow Sulfur Crystals In Martian Rock (phys.org) 25
NASA reports in an article for Phys.Org: Scientists were stunned on May 30 when a rock that NASA's Curiosity Mars rover drove over cracked open to reveal something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals. Since October 2023, the rover has been exploring a region of Mars rich with sulfates, a kind of salt that contains sulfur and forms as water evaporates. But where past detections have been of sulfur-based minerals -- in other words, a mix of sulfur and other materials -- the rock Curiosity recently cracked open is made of elemental (pure) sulfur. It isn't clear what relationship, if any, the elemental sulfur has to other sulfur-based minerals in the area.
While people associate sulfur with the odor from rotten eggs (the result of hydrogen sulfide gas), elemental sulfur is odorless. It forms in only a narrow range of conditions that scientists haven't associated with the history of this location. And Curiosity found a lot of it -- an entire field of bright rocks that look similar to the one the rover crushed. "Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert," said Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "It shouldn't be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting."
While people associate sulfur with the odor from rotten eggs (the result of hydrogen sulfide gas), elemental sulfur is odorless. It forms in only a narrow range of conditions that scientists haven't associated with the history of this location. And Curiosity found a lot of it -- an entire field of bright rocks that look similar to the one the rover crushed. "Finding a field of stones made of pure sulfur is like finding an oasis in the desert," said Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "It shouldn't be there, so now we have to explain it. Discovering strange and unexpected things is what makes planetary exploration so exciting."
Pfff, it's raining diamonds on Venus (Score:2)
And everyone gets excited about something we have plenty of here.
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And everyone gets excited about something we have plenty of here.
There are plenty of diamonds here too. They're just being hoarded by DeBeers to keep the price artificially high.
Not so cheesy anymore (Score:2)
Green crystals on a red planet! I vaguely remember a cheesy show from the 1960's showing giant green crystals jutting out from the red surface of Mars. It seemed corny watching it in the 1980's. But who's laughing now!
Another rover photographed hematite spheres on top of rocky stems sticking out at an angle. That also looked like cheesy sci-fi of the 50's and 60's. I suspect the sci-fi set was inspired by bread-mold under a microscope.
Sometimes "far out" space-art ain't so far out.
Re: Not so cheesy anymore (Score:2)
The Tomorrow People?
There is a perfectly rational explanation (Score:3)
We all know that sulfur marks the presence... of The Devil! This finding only proves that The Evil is capable of interplanetary travel!
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We all know that sulfur marks the presence... of The Devil! This finding only proves that The Evil is capable of interplanetary travel!
Perhaps god shouldn't have given it that ability. Another oversight?
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Now we need to find... (Score:4, Funny)
Some potassium nitrate, coal and diamonds.
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Then we just need to form some sort of rudimentary lathe.
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Now we just need to form some sort of rudimentary lathe.
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Good one. But, why did he need to take his shirt off?
He needed to make cloth patches to put around the projectiles to get a tighter seal with the barrel.
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Clearly I am destined to be a redshirt.
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There is a different oxidizer - chlorate - in the soil. Maybe you could find a place where water has extracted and concentrated it.
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This is the sort of content I came here for ;)
Crystals you say? (Score:1)
Damn Martian hippies forgot to clean up after their last concert.
"...an entire field of bright rocks..." (Score:2)
Elemental Sulfur Formation on Earth (Score:5, Insightful)
The formation of elemental ("native") sulfur on Earth relies one way or another on the existence of life. In volcanoes it is a partial oxidation process of hydrogen sulfide to form sulfur dioxide which reacts with more hydrogen sulfide to produce pure sulfur and water - so photosynthesis to provide oxygen is required. The other way it is formed are from fossil hydrocarbons by sulfur metabolizing bacteria. Neither of these processes have existed on Mars for a very long time, if ever.
On Earth a find like like would be attributed to the action of life. Either they come up with an abiogenic method by which this sulfur was formed, or it provides direct evidence of formerly living systems on Mars.
Better To Be Lucky Than Good? (Score:2)
NASA's Curiosity Rover Discovers Yellow Sulfur (Score:2)