The mystery of a rare anhydrous mass in the Gale cluster discovered by the Mars Curiosity rover in 2016 has finally been solved by Space researchers.
A team of planetary scientists from Rice University, NASA's Johnson Space Center and the California Institute of Technology ( CalTech) believe that a thick layer of tridymite was sprayed in the crance of Gale when it was still filled with water about 1 billion years ago.
The new discovery shows that the Red planet has an interesting and more complex volcanic history than previously thought.
Tridymite - an extremely rare form on Earth - is a highly symmetrical form of the anhydrous plant and often appears as small plates or colorless counterfeit six-sided crystals in felsic volcanic volcanic cavities. The way tridymite reached the ancient reservoir has caused difficulties for researchers for many years.
The discovery of tridymite in mud in Gale C study is one of the most surprising observations the Curiosity rover has made in its 10 years of exploring Mars, said Professor Kirsten Siebach, a member of the research team at Rice University.
Tridymite often appears in volcanic formation and outbursts on Earth, but we found it at the bottom of the ancient lake on Mars, where most of the volcanoes are still very primitive, added Professor Siebach.
To solve this mystery, Siebach and his colleagues reviewed data related to the formation of tridymite on Earth. They also looked at models of volcanoes on the Red planet, volcanic materials, and sedimentary evidence collected from the Gale C study - where the Curiosity rover made landfall in August 2012.
After the research, Professor Siebach's team proposed a new scenario showing that magma on Mars has been lying longer than usual in a chamber under a volcano. This allows it to at least partially cool - a process called crystallization - and increase the silicon concentration of magma.
A large landslide then sprayed ash containing this synthetic silicon in the form of tridymite into the lake and then became a cape of Gale volcano, as well as surrounding rivers. This volcanic sedge is gradually decomposed by water in ancient lakes, which also helps classify the minerals in the ash, leaving behind the tridymite mineral that the Curiosity rover found in 2016.
Its a simple evolution of the other volcanic rocks weve found in the c Vuettel, Siebach says. Because we only saw this mineral once and it was concentrated in one layer, we thought the volcano may have exploded at the same time as the lake there. Although the specific model we analyzed is not just volcanic ash, it is the ash that has been transferred.
The discovery also has broader significance for Mars' geological history. That means the Red planet had to go through a period of intense volcanic activity and explosion more than 3 billion years ago. This is the time when Mars changes from a damp and warm world to a dry, barren planet that we are familiar with today.
Siebach concluded: There is a lot of evidence of basalt volcanic explosions on Mars, but this is a more biological form of chemistry. This study shows that the Red planet may have a more complex and attractive volcanic history than we had previously imagined.
