A Martian meteorite nicknamed Black Beauty
Image courtesy of Carl B. Agee (University of New
Mexico)
Joel Kontinen
”Crystals inside a Martian meteorite
hint that there may have been plentiful hot water on Mars when the rock formed "4.45 billion years" ago.
The rock, nicknamed Black Beauty, was blasted into
space by an impact on the surface of Mars before ultimately crashing into the Sahara
Desert Morocco in 2011 and is formally known as Northwest Africa 7034.
Aaron Cavosie at
Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and his colleagues have spent years
studying a tiny fragment of it that includes a zircon crystal measuring 50
micrometres across.
Cavosie describes Black Beauty as a “garbage can” rock
because it was formed from hundreds of fragments smashed together. “It’s a
wonderful buffet of Martian history, a mixture of very old and very young
rocks,” he says. “But many of the fragments in it are among the oldest pieces
of rock from Mars.”
The evolutionists believe that the solar system was
formed 4,5 billion years ago, but the dating methods are full of danger.
Source:
James Woodford 2024 Meteorite crystals show evidence of hot water on ancient Mars | New Scientist 22 November
Posts
