Self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover [image credit: NASA/JPL @ Wikipedia]
Remote control geology at work.
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Using data from NASA’s Curiosity rover, scientists have discovered patterns on Mars that provide evidence of a cyclical climate similar to that of Earth.
This major discovery opens up new prospects for research into the origin of life, says SciTechDaily.
The results of the study, which was conducted by scientists at the CNRS, Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier, and Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, with the participation of CNES, were published on August 9, 2023, in the journal Nature.
Mars’s Terrain and Previous Discoveries
The surface of Mars, unlike Earth’s, is not constantly renewed by plate tectonics. This has resulted in the preservation of massive terrain areas remarkable for their abundance in fossil rivers and lakes dating back billions of years.
Since 2012, NASA’s Curiosity, the first rover to explore such ancient remains, had already detected the presence of simple organic molecules. These molecules can be formed by both geological and biological processes.
Conditions for Life Formation
However, the emergence of primitive life forms, as hypothesized by scientists, initially requires environmental conditions favorable to the spontaneous organization of these molecules into complex organic compounds.
Such conditions are precisely what have recently been discovered by a research team from the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (CNRS/Université de Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier/CNES) and the Laboratoire de Géologie: Terre, Planètes, Environnement (CNRS/ENS de Lyon/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1), together with their US and Canadian colleagues.
Evidence of Martian Climate Patterns
Using the Mastcam and the ChemCam instruments on Curiosity, they have discovered deposits of salts forming a hexagonal pattern in sedimentary layers dating from 3.8 to 3.6 billion years ago. Similar to the hexagons observed in terrestrial basins that dry out seasonally, they are the first fossil evidence of a sustained, cyclical, regular Martian climate with dry and wet seasons.
By letting molecules repeatedly interact at different concentrations, independent laboratory experiments have shown that this kind of environment provides the ideal conditions for the formation of complex precursor and constituent compounds of life, such as RNA.
Conclusion: Future Research Opportunities
These new observations should enable scientists to take a fresh look at the large-scale images obtained from orbit, which have already identified numerous terrains with a similar composition.
They now know where to look for traces of the natural processes that gave rise to life, of which no vestiges remain on Earth.
Full article here.
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ZME Science: The hexagon shape and why it shows up so much in nature (May 2023)
– ‘Why does nature, which often seems so messy and irregular, seem to prefer this shape? Well, as it turns out, it’s all about geometry and physics.’
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Caption: ‘This picture shows hexagonal saucers in Badwater Basin that are approximately 2 – 2.5 metres in diameter. These are part of larger-scale features that are also hexagonally-shaped and can be seen from Dante’s View nearly 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above. The saucers are formed after the salty pan begins to dry and the salt crystals expand.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_of_interest_in_the_Death_Valley_area#Badwater_Basin
See also — https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fmd99j025q0z11.jpg&rdt=49929
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Science of natural hexagons — https://sierra.sitehost.iu.edu/papers/2015/huang.html
CONCLUSION
Polygonal tessellations in geological formations owe their remarkable structure to nature’s desire for energy efficiency: by forming hexagons, rocks can most efficiently release tensional stress associated with cooling and desiccation. In the formation of columnar jointing, thermal contraction of cooling lava produces columns of hexagonal rock that meticulously fit together; in mud crack formation, desiccation creates a less-uniform, rectilinear pattern that may eventually trend towards hexagonal tessellation; and in salt pan formation, repeated rainfall and precipitation/evaporation cause hexagons demarcated by elevated salt ridges to spread across a desert floor. All in all, the idea that tessellation formation is self-organizing – that there is no one governing force that arranges an overall pattern but that, instead, local geological forces work together to form a complex emergent structure of hexagons – serves as a testament to the mathematical and aesthetic elegance of our dynamic physical world.
“they have discovered deposits of salts forming a hexagonal pattern in sedimentary layers dating from 3.8 to 3.6 billion years ago. ”
So are they dating the soil or the formation of the hexagon? What is it about the hexagon that can inform the observer its age? Seems to me spectrometry can only yield an approximate age of the soil, not how long it has been in its present shape.
JB – the study says:
The observed polygonal patterns are physically and temporally associated with the transition from smectite clays to sulfate-bearing strata, a globally distributed mineral transition. This indicates that the Noachian–Hesperian transition (3.8–3.6 billion years ago) may have sustained an Earth-like climate regime and surface environments favourable to prebiotic evolution.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06220-3
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