Water theory evaporates, but Mars mystery deepens

[Lionel]

The first close-up pictures of the outcrop of rock discovered by NASA's Opportunity rover on Mars rule out the possibility that the layered rock was created by volcanic lava flows.The finding makes it much less likely that there was once a large body of water at the Meridiani Planum site.But the photographs revealed a new mystery - small grains of an apparently different material embedded in the layers of stone. "The deeper we get into this, the more it is reminding me of a mystery novel," said the principal investigator, Steve Squyres, of Cornell University."We start getting clues, one at a time. Some of them mean something and some are probably red herrings, and we don't know which is which yet." The photographs of the outcrop, which the rover team has named Opportunity Ledge, show layers of very fine-grained materials, one- or two-tenths of an inch thick. That is much too thin for lava flows.

The team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has narrowed the possibilities for the rock's formation down to two, Dr Squyres said. "One is that it is volcanic ash, and the other is that it is windblown dust compacted into sedimentary rock.

View: Full Article | Source: smh.com.au

[geeohn]

maybe they will find a new Gem like the Mars' Diamond or Mars' Ruby.