This Mysterious Meteorite Holds Evidence That Water Existed On Mars Around 742 Million Years Ago
In 1931, a meteorite was discovered in a drawer at Purdue University. No one knew who it originally belonged to or where it came from.
Researchers didn’t realize that the gases trapped within the rock matched the Martian atmosphere until the 1980s.
Now, new research has suggested that the mysterious meteorite holds evidence that liquid water existed on Mars around 742 million years ago.
The Lafayette meteorite is about two inches long. During its formation, its minerals interacted with liquid water, according to early studies of the meteorite.
However, it was unclear when the minerals formed. A recent study found that they are less than a billion years old.
“We do not think there was abundant liquid water on the surface of Mars at this time,” said Marissa Tremblay, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor with the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University.
“Instead, we think the water came from the melting of nearby subsurface ice called permafrost and that the permafrost melting was caused by magmatic activity that still occurs periodically on Mars to the present day.”
The research team used variations in molecules of argon within the minerals to figure out the approximate age of the formation of the minerals.
The age of the space rock could have been affected by an impact that launched the meteorite from Mars, the heating it experienced during the 11 million years it was floating through space, or the heating it experienced when it fell to Earth and burned up a little as it traveled through Earth’s atmosphere.
Lukas Gojda – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
But they were able to determine that none of these factors affected the age of Lafayette. The ability to confirm the date of the meteorite’s interaction with liquid water does not just reveal more clues about Mars’ history.
It also has implications for future meteorites or other samples brought back from space missions to different worlds.
The same methods can be used to uncover more information about other planets’ water activity, climate history, and potential for supporting life.
“We have demonstrated a robust way to date alteration minerals in meteorites that can be applied to other meteorites and planetary bodies to understand when liquid water might have been present,” Tremblay said.
The team does not know exactly when the meteorite arrived on Earth, but in 2022, trace amounts of a crop fungus were found on the rock’s surface.
In addition, unconfirmed reports of a student witnessing the meteorite land while on a fishing trip indicated that it landed in 1919.
Many meteoroids are created by impacts on Mars and other planetary bodies, but only a few of them ever make it to Earth.
The study was published in the journal Geochemical Perspective Letters.
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