In an effort to determine if conditions were ever right on Mars to sustain life, a team of scientists, including a Michigan State University professor, has examined a meteorite that formed on the Red Planet more than a billion years ago.
And although this team's work is not specifically solving the mystery, it is laying the groundwork for future researchers to answer this age-old question.
The problem, said MSU geological sciences professor Michael Velbel, is that most meteorites that originated on Mars arrived on Earth so long ago that now they have characteristics that tell of their life on Earth, obscuring any clues it might offer about their time on Mars.
"These meteorites contain water-related mineral and chemical signatures that can signify habitable conditions," he said. "The trouble is by the time most of these meteorites have been lying around on Earth they pick up signatures that look just like habitable environments, because they are. Earth, obviously, is habitable.
"If we could somehow prove the signature on the meteorite was from before it came to Earth, that would be telling us about Mars."
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