Jewelry and life - how are opals on Mars and the presence of life on the Red Planet connected (4 photos)

An endless red desert strewn with opals. Sounds like fantasy? But no. This is not just a reality, but a close reality - such landscapes cover Mars right now.





In particular, it is precisely such a surface that is located at the bottom of the dried lakes, scientists from Nasa found out. Moreover, traces of water.



But the matter is not only and not so much even in the economy, but in the fact that that water, according to traces in semi-precious stones, was on Red planet much later and disappeared, respectively, later than was accepted count earlier. Thus, on Mars, there could probably exist life.





The opals themselves, by the way, were found around cracks in Gale Crater. Scientists were interested in this particular place because in a huge the lake, 154 km wide, had halos around cracks. Such halos evidence that there was moisture on the planet. And opals may appear only in the interaction of silicon dioxide and water.



To confirm their guesses, scientists specifically sent to place the Curiosity apparatus, which confirmed that the stones were in place are present. And so, given that the water could be here quite a long time, another 2.9 billion years (more than half the age of the Earth) here could be life.