HALOS Discovered On Mars Could Widen Time Frame For Potential Life

The concentration of silica is very high at the centerlines of these halos,” said Jens Frydenvang, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the new study. “What we’re seeing is that silica appears to have migrated between very old sedimentary bedrock and into younger overlying rocks. The goal of NASA’s Curiosity rover mission has been to find out if Mars was ever habitable, and it has been very successful in showing that Gale crater once held a lake with water that we would even have been able to drink, ... -thus further expanding the window for when life might have existed on Mars.”

HALOS Discovered On Mars Could Widen Time Frame For Potential Life



Ahh, the basis for me joining ATS....good old fashioned aliens...

The fact we have been on the verge of 'confirming' aliens for nearly a half century is maddening...

How can anyone not see life signs in the Antarctic meteor dissected 20 years ago???

Anyhow, I digress...

Mars was wet...wherever we find liquid water, we find an abundance of life...

Heck, we find life in frozen water, boiling water, or solid rock...

Come on NASA, we are all cheering for you...

Find the aliens and let's go eat them...I mean "meat" them...oops, "meet"

Joking aside, proving life is abundant(which it undoubtedly is) in the universe will be formative and shape mankinds future...

We will no longer be alone...

-Chris

This is the only fairly clear "halo" I was able to find. I just chalked it up to a tiny puddle of salt water that dried up and left the rings. Although, the rings follow the contours of the rocks, which I'm unable to explain, which is why I pulled it out of the photo.

a reply to: Christosterone


How much wider is that time frame? I could not find a number that quantified how long the time of habitability should be lengthened.

I even skimmed through the actual scientific paper that this article references, and the best they say is:

"Consequently, the timescale for potential habitability, at least in the subsurface of Gale, must be substantially extended."

Extended by how much?

Granted, the paper also states that "Hence, this sequence of events implies that considerable amounts of neutral to alkaline groundwater were active in Gale crater well after Mount Sharp group lacustrine activity ceased", but I have no idea what "well after Mount Sharp group lacustrine activity ceased" means in terms of timescale.

originally posted by: Box of Rain
a reply to: Christosterone


How much wider is that time frame? I could not find a number that quantified how long the time of habitability should be lengthened.

I even skimmed through the actual scientific paper that this article references, and the best they say is:

"Consequently, the timescale for potential habitability, at least in the subsurface of Gale, must be substantially extended."

Extended by how much?

Granted, the paper also states that "Hence, this sequence of events implies that considerable amounts of neutral to alkaline groundwater were active in Gale crater well after Mount Sharp group lacustrine activity ceased", but I have no idea what "well after Mount Sharp group lacustrine activity ceased" means in terms of timescale.

Research papers have proposed everything from never to millions of years....

It's a vagary we, the unwashed masses, are forced to accept based upon the data [scraps] we get when and how they deem appropriate..

-Chris

Probably life is still there, but moved underground. We've found life on Earth at the deepest ocean trenches, in isolated sealed off underground lakes and caves, so why not Mars?

originally posted by: stormcell
Probably life is still there, but moved underground. We've found life on Earth at the deepest ocean trenches, in isolated sealed off underground lakes and caves, so why not Mars?

Yeah. I think if the subsurface still has moisture (which the evidence shows it does) than there is a decent chance that if life ever existed on Mars that it still might exist in that subsurface moisture.

a reply to: yuppa

I need a weapon.

a reply to: Christosterone

For some reason the idea of eating aliens was akin to eating seafood. Yuk!

Weird huh?

originally posted by: stormcell
Probably life is still there, but moved underground. We've found life on Earth at the deepest ocean trenches, in isolated sealed off underground lakes and caves, so why not Mars?

And what if there wasn't? What would that say about life on Earth? Suddenly a bit more special perhaps....

Come on now! We know there is life on Mars because Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck have been there and met them.

I like Daffy and Bugs, but I don't like the Roadrunner.

originally posted by: MichiganSwampBuck
Come on now! We know there is life on Mars because Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck have been there and met them.

I like Daffy and Bugs, but I don't like the Roadrunner.

"The illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator!
That creature has stolen the space modulator!"

Great discover, Nasa!

One small step for us, but a big step for human kind.

We're on the way to know if we are not alone in the Universe. If we are, we'll never know, given the immensity of the Universe itself.