NASA finds Martian 'spiderwebs': What it means |
NASA finds Martian ‘spiderwebs’: What it means
(NewsNation) — NASA‘s “Curiosity” Mars rover has now captured photos of Martian rock formations resembling spiderwebs.
Before you think of intergalactic spiderlike creatures, the geological frameworks, called boxwork, are called spiderwebs because of what they look like from space.
The spiderwebs are low ridges with sandy hollows in between and crisscross the red planet’s surface. These webs suggest water flowed on Mars more recently than scientists earlier thought, raising new questions about how long life could have survived on the Red Planet.
Tina Seeger of Rice University, one of the mission scientists leading the boxwork investigation, joined “Jesse Weber Live” on Thursday to discuss the revelation.
“These ridges are maybe two parking spaces wide, and they stand 3 to 6 feet tall above the sandy hollows between them. So would be a pretty fun landscape to ride your BMX bike across,” Seeger told NewsNation.
She added that the area explored by the rover was initially believed to be dry, but researchers now believe the web features “formed because the rock was buried over time and fractured because of all that pressure covering it, and then groundwater flowed through those cracks, and that groundwater was rich in different minerals that could crystallize in those cracks and the surrounding rock.”
Seeger believes it is unclear exactly what this may lead to, but “following the water” will help their research.
“We all need water. All sorts of microbes need water,” she continued. “So our investigation on Mars has been about looking for signs that there was water and signs that it was a neutral pH, a good temperature, where microbes could have lived.”
Seeger added, “So, now that we see this evidence for later-stage groundwater where we could have maybe had microbes living in the subsurface, if they were there, we can keep looking for fossil evidence.”
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