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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.'"
Even more ironic-- it contains olivine. Spirit's found some of that.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Yeah, I saw the "magmatism is the main process by which water moves from the core of planets to their surface" thing and coughed quietly to myself *cough* *cough*.
Core differentiation generally happens REALLY early in planet's history, and it seems to me that it isn't precisely correct to say magmatism in this context, (which implies "volcanism" at least to me). Bouyancy and heat are what really moves water to the surface, since it is a) much less dense than rock (think about it) and b) not real stable at real high T.
In other words -- what moves water around is a whole mess of ugly chemistry and thermodynamics that I'll leave to my petrologist buddies to explain to me (dah? dah!) with odd pentagonal diagrams.
the distance from the earth to mars, at its closest is more than 55 million kilometers (33 million miles). the article states that about 20 such rocks have been found on earth so far. It seems that Mar at some point must have undergone some pretty serious bombardment from asteroids, and big ones too it seems, if the impacts caused martian rock to leave its gravitational field, and come all the way to earth. It seems like trying to throw a dart at an ant from 100 yards
Perhaps you mean another, now defunct, Sun. Ours is still made of Hydrogen.
Almost every piece of matter on Earth came from defunct Suns (stars) what exploded at the end of their lives. The very monitor you are staring at is left-over star boom boom. It is suspected that heavy elements like gold came from supernovas or hypernovas, really big stars with really big booms, the kind that can outshine entire galaxies for a few days or weeks. So next time you see a gold ring, realize that it came from the largest kind of explosions known in the entire universe. Booms beyond human comprehension.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh, you have no idea how well you summed up the petrology of this meterorite:
"It is described as a peridotite, an extremely rare type of Mars rock consisting of the minerals olivine, pyroxene and plagioclase glass."
This beastie originated near the mantle, at great depth. And there is NO water down there. If the meteorite contains water, it may be from Mars, but it may also be contamination from earth.
I've seen zero evidence for either, and after NASA claimed they had proof of Mars life in a meteorite, I will accept no evidence until validated by and outside lab.