Martian Rock Found In Morocco

daeley writes "The BBC is reporting that a rock found in 2001 in Morocco is originally from Mars, similar in composition to the 1977 Antartica find. 'The meteorite would have been blasted off the Red Planet by an impact and may hold clues to Mars' watery past... scientists say the fragments are magmatic rocks. Magmatism is the main process by which water moves from the core of planets to their surface.'"

Comments

water at the core? Ummm, no.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

The core of a planet is too hot and dense for water.

AFAIK, the parent is wrong.

RS

Re:That explains it

[bad_fx]

Uh...Nice cut and paste. Maybe you should think of something original next time.

Re:What's next

[Tablizer]

What's next? Are we now going to find out that the rocks being analyzed by Spirit are actually from earth?

It is easier for Mars debri to transfer to Earth than the other way around because of the stronger gravity on Earth. I read somewhere that Earth's gravity is on the borderline of being too strong to allow rocks to escape via meteor impact. One might say that some impacts are much stronger than others so that fast ones might still do it. However, past a certain impact energy, ejected material vaporizes such that there are no projectiles left.

In other words, too slow and rocks cannot reach escape velocity. Too fast and rocks vaporize from the heat of the impact. The middle "just right" window may not exist, or barely exist on Earth, but is relatively wide on Mars because of lower gravity.

Thus, if there are Earth rocks on Mars, there will be far far fewer compared to the other way around.

Re:circumstances regarding how it got here

[Paul Cameron]

It seems like trying to throw a dart at an ant from 100 yards

Your analogy is flawed.

1. You're ignoring gravity, the rock hits Earth partly because the earth is altering it's trajectory
2. If the rock does not directly hit Earth, the two can swing around the sun and try again. The rock won't necessarily fly out of the solar system