Scientists: Martian mud cracked in a manner that only happens after repeated cycles of drying
The Mars Curiosity rover continues to make discoveries that shed light on the early days of the Red Planet, this time having found evidence that the unforgiving dust world once experienced seasonal weather patterns and flooding.
The evidence came from photographs snapped by the NASA bot of the dry, dusty Martian surface marked by a series of hexagonal shapes that indicate mud covered the surface before drying and cracking.
The patterns Curiosity spotted showed junction angles of around 120 degrees, otherwise known as Y junctions, that only occur after repeat cycles of wet and dry.
“In experiments, using clay layers, joint angles progressively tend towards 120° after 10 consecutive dryings with more cycles required to reach a homogeneous distribution centered at 120° and mature patterns of hexagonal shapes,” scientists studying the snaps noted in a paper, which was published in Nature this week.
The cracks themselves are mere centimetres deep, which the boffins said suggests short wet-dry cycles “were maintained at least episodically in the long term,” which would be yet another favorable condition for the past emergence of life on Mars.
