!NASA discovers mysterious fossilized waves on Mars
The Curiosity rover has discovered on Mars what appear to be traces of waves fossilized billions of years ago, ripple-marks as they are called on Earth.
It has been more than a decade since therovernuclear Curiosity surveys the bottom of Gale Crater on Mars . Hergeneratorradioisotope thermoelectric powered by the nucleus decay ofplutoniumallows him to carry out many scientific studies of the rocks and sedimentary deposits he discovers, for example using one of the main instruments on board the ChemCam machine (for Chemistry and Camera complex ) , a device which has been in part designed and manufactured in France, by the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (Irap) in Toulouse.
the curiosity rover has taught us a lot about the history of mars and its potential to support life. take a tour of its landing site, gale crater. to obtain a fairly accurate french translation, click on the white rectangle at the bottom right. the english subtitles should then appear. then click on the nut to the right of the rectangle, then on “subtitles” and finally on “translate automatically”. choose “french”.
nasa, jet propulsion laboratoryOne of NASA's latest releases regarding a recent discovery ofCuriositymade a bit of a buzz just as recently. It must be said that Ashwin Vasavada, the scientific manager of the Curiosity project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, did not hesitate to say that for him and his colleagues, they were in the presence of " the best water proof andwavesthat we saw throughout the mission. We climbed through hundreds of meters of depositslakeand have never seen evidence like this – and now we have found it in a place we thought was dry ”.
Unexpected Fossilized Waves
As the JPL video above reminds us, the Gale crater was originally an impact crater that formed billions of years ago on Mars when waterliquidexisted and depositedsedimentin the lakes and rivers which then occupied it. THEstratathe highest excavated by erosionwind turbineof thewindsMartians, however, were to show increasingly water-poor environments and in the region recently reached by the rover the detection ofmineralssulphates, such as sulphate ofmagnesium(Epsom salt is one type),calcium sulfate(including thegypsum) and sodium chloride (ordinary table salt), had led planetary geologists to believe that the rover was moving on layers of a markedly dry period on Mars.
since 2014, the rover has scaled the foothills of mount sharp, a five-kilometer-high mountain that was once dotted with lakes and streams that would have provided a rich environment for microbial life. mount sharp is made up of layers, the oldest at the bottom of the mountain and the youngest at the top. as the rover ascends, it progresses along a martian timeline, allowing scientists to study how mars evolved from a planet that was more earth-like in its ancient past, with a warmer climate and abundant water, to the freezing desert it is today. to obtain a fairly accurate french translation, click on the white rectangle at the bottom right. the english subtitles should then appear. then click on the nut to the right of the rectangle, then on “subtitles” and finally on “translate automatically”. choose “french”.
nasa, jet propulsion laboratoryIt was therefore with great surprise that they finally made the discovery of what sedimentologists andgeologistscalled ripple-marks on Earth and which are therefore quite mysterious here...
a reconstruction in the lab of the formation of ripple-marks, the ripples of waves.
mit geomorphologyFor what ? Because on Earth, these structures, also called wave ripples, form onsandin a shallow aquatic environment with surface waves which will induce underwatermovementswhich sculpt the loose sediments being deposited.
fossil ripple-marks observed in a carboniferous sandstone near kilkee (ireland).
sebastien blanchardSource : websites