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Martian Meteorite Could Have Contained Ancient Water And Life, NASA Paper Says
A scanning electron microscope image of a small section of a meteorite found evidence of past water in a Martian meteorite (specifically, in the form of tunnels and microtunnels). The meteorite is called Yamato 000593. The rock was originally recovered in Antarctica in 2000 and is believed to have come from Mars. Credit: NASA
Could this meteorite show evidence of ancient water and life on Mars? That’s one possibility raised in a new paper led by NASA and including members of a team who made a contentious claim about Martian microfossils in another meteorite 18 years ago.
“This is no smoking gun,” stated lead author Lauren White, who is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, of the findings released this week. “We can never eliminate the possibility of contamination in any meteorite. But these features are nonetheless interesting and show that further studies of these meteorites should continue.”
The new, peer-reviewed work focuses on tunnels and microtunnels the scientists said they found in a meteorite called Yamato 00593. The meteorite is about 30 pounds (13.7 kilograms) and was discovered in Antarctica in 2000. The structures were found deep within the rock, NASA stated, and “suggest biological processes might have been at work on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.”
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Read the rest of Martian Meteorite Could Have Contained Ancient Water And Life, NASA Paper Says (338 words)
© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: allen hills 84001, antarctica, Astrobiology, martian meteorites, yamato 00593
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/109859/martian-meteorite-could-have-contained-ancient-water-and-life-nasa-paper-says/
