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User:Robertinventor/Simple animals could live in Martian brines - Extended Interview with planetary scientist Vlada Stamenković: Difference between revisions

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User:Robertinventor/Simple animals could live in Martian brines - Extended Interview with planetary scientist Vlada Stamenković (edit)

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===Special minerals on Mars===
 
'''''(background information):''''' Opportunity discovered manganese oxygens on Mars. These require oxygen to form. Some researchers have suggested they formed in an early Mars atmosphere that was thick and oxygen rich (which doesn't require life; it could for instance be oxygen rich due to ionizing radiation splitting water).
'''''(background information):''''' The idea that Mars had enough oxygen in the past for marine animals, billions of years ago, when the atmosphere was thicker, is not too surprising nowadays since the discovery of those manganese oxides. That it may have enough right now is what is so very surprising about this new research, given that it has such a thin atmosphere, with so little oxygen in it. The atmosphere is unbreathable, its trace amounts of oxygen can't be used by any form of terrestrial animal life, but the brines may be another story.
 
Their research alsogives helpsan toalternative explainexplanation for the presence of somethese minerals on the Mars surface, such as manganese oxides which require conditions of water and oxygen to form. Some researchers hav suggested they formed in an early Mars atmosphere that was thick and oxygen rich (which doesn't require life; it could for instance be oxygen rich due to ionizing radiation splitting water). This new reseach shows that these minerals could also form without an oxygen rich atmosphere.
 
As previously interviewed by National Geographic (October 22):
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