Scientists bored more than a mile deep in the Antarctic ice sheet have unearthed a mineral that is rarely seen Earth but found in abundance on Mars, Science Magazine reported.
The yellow-brown mineral, called jarosit, needs water and acidic conditions to form, according to NASA conditions that are difficult to find on the Red Planet right now. Nevertheless, after the Opportunity rover jarosite was first discovered on Mars in 2004, the mineral appeared at several Mars locations, leaving scientists wondering how the mineral became so common, Science reports.
Some people thought that when ice covered the planet billions of years ago, dust with the necessary minerals – iron, sulfate and potassium – might have been trapped in it.
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“Mars is such a dusty place – everything is covered with dust,” author Giovanni Baccolo, a geologist at the University of Milan-Bicocca, told Science. But although ice could provide the wet environment needed to convert oxygen into jarosite, scientists have never seen dust and ice react chemically to form the mineral.
But the discovery of jarosite particles trapped in the ice of Antarctica may support the theory, the researchers reported in an article published Jan. 19 in the journal Nature Communications.
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On earth, jarosit is a rare mineral that grows in mine waste exposed to air and rain, Science reports. It can also be near the holes of volcanoes, according to NASA. Baccolo and his colleagues never expected to get the mineral in Antarctica, he told Science. but when the team pulled an approximately 1,620-meter ice core from the ground, they found trace particles of jarosite, smaller than grains of sand, buried in the deepest layers of the ice.
After examining the particles with an electron microscope, the team concluded that the jarosite was forming in bags in the ice. This finding suggests that the mineral is formed in the same way on Mars, although jarocyte on the Red Planet occurs in “meter-thick deposits”, unlike some sparse grains, Megan Elwood Madden, a geochemist at the University of Oklahoma, which is not involved in the research, said Science.
These ultra-thick plates of jarosite may have formed on Mars because the Red Planet is much dustier than Antarctica, providing more raw material to form jarosite, Baccolo noted. “This is just the first step in connecting deep Antarctic ice with the Martian environment,” he said.
You can read more about the discovery at Science Journal.
Originally published on Live Science.