Space & Astronomy

New find suggests there was oxygen on Mars

By T.K. Randall
July 31, 2016

Image Credit: NASA / JPL Rocks are certainly not a rare sight on the surface of Mars, but while most of them might look the same to the untrained eye, some actually harbor important clues about the planet's distant past.

One of these, which was discovered back in 2013 by the Curiosity rover within the formation known as 'Caribou', was found to contain something very unexpected indeed - manganese.

Now following a thorough analysis of the find, scientists have determined that this rock - and others like it - contain so much of this element that it could have only got there if basalt rock had been dissolved in oxygenated water - a process requiring significant quantities of oxygen."If we could peer onto Mars millions of years ago, we'd see a very wet world," wrote researcher Nina Lanza. "Yet we didn't think Mars ever had enough oxygen to concentrate manganese – and that's why we thought the data from Caribou must have been an error."

How oyxgen got in to the Martian atmosphere remains unclear however it is possible that ionizing radiation from the sun could have split water molecules in to oxygen and hydrogen.

Because Mars has no magnetic field and only a thin atmosphere the hydrogen atoms, being extremely light, could have simply floated away while the oxygen was absorbed by the rocks.

"This tells us that Mars has evolved very differently than we thought it did," said Lanza.

Source: Christian Science Monitor

Tags: Mars, Oxygen