Did alien life exist in hot water on Mars billions of years ago?

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The Mars meteorite 'Black Beauty' suggests there used to be hot water on the Red Planet.

On the left an orange-brown sphere on the right a smooth black rock
(Left) an image of Mars as the dry and arid planet we know today (right) the Mars meteorite Black Beauty which indicates the planet's watery past. (Image credit: NASA/Curtin University)

Scientists have found what seems to be the oldest direct evidence of hot water flowing on Mars during its ancient past. The discovery could further indicate that the Red Planet, despite its arid and desolate appearance today, may have been capable of supporting life long ago. 

The evidence was delivered to Earth and sealed within the well-known Martian meteorite NWA7034, found in the Sahara Desert in 2011. Due to its black, highly polished appearance, the Martian rock is also known as "Black Beauty."

At an estimated 2 billion years old, Black Beauty is the second oldest Martian meteorite ever discovered. However, the Curtin University team discovered something even older within it: a 4.45 billion-year-old zircon grain that harbors the fingerprints of fluids rich in water.

Team member Aaron Cavosie from Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences thinks this discovery will open up new avenues to understanding hydrothermal systems associated with the activity of volcanic magma that once ran through Mars.

"We used nano-scale geochemistry to detect elemental evidence of hot water on Mars 4.45 billion years ago," Cavosie said in a statement. "Hydrothermal systems were essential for the development of life on Earth, and our findings suggest Mars also had water, a key ingredient for habitable environments, during the earliest history of crust formation."

Cavosie added that the team identified specific elements in this unique zircon fragment through nano-scale imaging and spectroscopy, which allows the chemical composition of objects to be determined. These included the elements iron, aluminum, yttrium and sodium. 

"These elements were added as the zircon formed 4.45 billion years ago, suggesting water was present during early Martian magmatic activity," Cavosie said.

The Martian meteorite dubbed "Black Beauty" discovered in the Sahara in 2011. (Image credit: NASA)

Evidence of waterways and ancient lakebeds on Mars had previously led scientists to theorize that water was present on the Red Planet in liquid form and in great abundance around 4.1 billion years ago. This was during Mars' Noachian period, when the watery Martian surface was intensely bombarded by asteroids.

The Red Planet is thought to have lost its water billions of years ago, when the Martian atmosphere was stripped away by harsh solar radiation from the sun. The loss of the Martian atmosphere meant there was nothing to prevent water vapor from escaping into space anymore. 

However, this new research implies that water in liquid form may have existed on Mars even earlier than previously expected in the planet's pre-Noachian period.

Related Stories:

 —   Infamous Mars meteorite contains organic molecules, but they aren't proof of life 

 —  Mars meteorites reveal clues about what lies within the Red Planet 

 —  The mystery of how Mars meteorites reach Earth may finally be solved

"A 2022 Curtin study of the same zircon grain found it had been 'shocked' by a meteorite impact, marking it as the first and only known shocked zircon from Mars," Cavosie said. "This new study takes us a step further in understanding early Mars by identifying tell-tale signs of water-rich fluids from when the grain formed, providing geochemical markers of water in the oldest known Martian crust."

The team's research was published on Friday (Nov. 22) in the journal Science Advances.

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Robert Lea
Robert Lea
Senior Writer

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

3 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rod
    I remember during the Clinton Admin, meteorite ALH84001 was hailed containing perhaps, little Martians. "Black Beauty" may have had hot water but nothing like ALH84001 fame is reported for it apparently.
    Reply
  • skynr13
    There is little evidence to prove what was in the meteorite was ever alive except it resembled a small worm. It was eventually concluded that the tubular was just an artifact of mineral formation.
    Reply
  • Torbjorn Larsson
    Nice support for our own early ocean formation on a young crust, where zircons have dated it to 4.4 / 4.3 billion years ago.

    skynr13 said:
    There is little evidence to prove what was in the meteorite was ever alive except it resembled a small worm. It was eventually concluded that the tubular was just an artifact of mineral formation.
    There were lots of evidence in ALH84001 at the time besides that singular clickbait image, but everyone of them have been rejected or found inconclusive:

    Other meteorites that have potential biological markings have generated less interest because they do not contain rock from a "wet" Mars; ALH84001 is the only meteorite originating when Mars may have had liquid surface water.
    In October 2011, it was reported that isotopic analysis indicated that the carbonates in ALH84001 were precipitated at a temperature of 18 °C (64 °F) with water and carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere. The carbonate carbon and oxygen isotope ratios imply deposition of the carbonates from a gradually evaporating subsurface water body, probably a shallow aquifer meters or tens of meters below the surface.
    In April 2020, researchers reported discovering nitrogen-bearing organics in Allan Hills 84001.
    A later study in January 2022 concluded that ALH84001 did not contain Martian life; the discovered organic molecules were found to be associated with abiotic processes (i.e., "serpentinization and carbonation reactions that occurred during the aqueous alteration of basalt rock by hydrothermal fluids") produced on the very early Mars 4 billion years ago instead.
    In January 2010, a team of scientists at Johnson Space Center, including McKay, argued that since their original paper was published in November 2009, the biogenic hypothesis has been further supported by the discovery of three times the original amount of fossil-like data, including more "biomorphs" (suspected Martian fossils), inside two additional Martian meteorites, as well as more evidence in other parts of the Allan Hills meteorite itself.
    However, the scientific consensus is that "morphology alone cannot be used unambiguously as a tool for primitive life detection." Interpretation of morphology is notoriously subjective, and its use alone has led to numerous errors of interpretation.
    Features of ALH84001 that have been interpreted as suggesting the presence of microfossils include:

    The structures resemble some modern terrestrial bacteria and their appendages. Though some are much smaller than any known extant Earth microbes, others are of the order of 100–200 nm in size, within the size limits of Pelagibacter ubique, the most common bacterium on Earth, which ranges from 120 to 200 nm, as well as hypothetical nanobacteria. RNA organisms, which are expected to have lived on Earth during the time period when ALH84001 was ejected from Mars, may also have been as small or smaller than these structures, as modern RNA viruses and viroids are often as little as a few dozen nanometers. Some of the structures are even larger, 1–2 microns in diameter. The smallest structures are too small to contain all the systems required by modern life.Some of the structures resemble colonies and biofilms. However, there are many instances of morphologies that suggested life and were later shown to be due to inorganic processes.The meteorite contains magnetite crystals of the unusual rectangular prism type, and organized into domains all about the same size, indistinguishable from magnetite produced biologically on Earth and not matching any known non-biological magnetite that forms naturally on Earth. The magnetite is embedded in the carbonate. If found on Earth it would be a very strong biosignature. However, in 2001, scientists were able to explain and produce carbonate globules containing similar magnetite grains through an inorganic process simulating conditions ALH84001 likely experienced on Mars.It contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) concentrated in the regions containing the carbonate globules, and these have been shown to be indigenous. Other organics such as amino acids do not follow this pattern and are probably due to Antarctic contamination. However, PAHs are also regularly found in asteroids, comets and meteorites, and in deep space, all in the absence of life.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001
    Reply