{"id":26774,"date":"2024-11-23T19:54:14","date_gmt":"2024-11-23T11:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/?post_type=media-release&#038;p=26774"},"modified":"2025-02-06T15:46:53","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T07:46:53","slug":"ancient-hot-water-on-mars-points-to-habitable-past-curtin-study","status":"publish","type":"media-release","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/media-release\/ancient-hot-water-on-mars-points-to-habitable-past-curtin-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient hot water on Mars points to habitable past: Curtin study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>New Â鶹ֱ²¥-led research has uncovered what may be the oldest direct evidence of ancient hot water activity on Mars, revealing the planet may have been habitable at some point in its past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The study analysed a 4.45 billion-year-old zircon grain from the famous Martian meteorite NWA7034, also known as <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/resource\/black-beauty-mars-meteorite\/\">Black Beauty<\/a>, and found geochemical \u2018fingerprints\u2019 of water-rich fluids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ancient hot water on Mars points to habitable past\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mFwhsnY7P3Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Study co-author Dr Aaron Cavosie from Curtin\u2019s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences said the discovery opened up new avenues for understanding ancient Martian hydrothermal systems associated with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Magmatism\">magmatism<\/a>, as well as the planet\u2019s past habitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe used nano-scale geochemistry to detect elemental evidence of hot water on Mars 4.45 billion years ago,\u201d Dr Cavosie said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHydrothermal 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThrough nano-scale imaging and spectroscopy, the team identified element patterns in this unique zircon, including iron, aluminium, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr Cavosie said the research showed that even though Mars\u2019 crust endured massive meteorite impacts that caused major surface upheaval, water was present during the early Pre-<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Noachian\">Noachian<\/a> period, prior to about 4.1 billion years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cA 2022 Curtin <a href=\"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/media-release\/shocked-zircon-find-a-one-off-gift-from-mars\/\">study<\/a> of the same zircon grain found it had been \u2018shocked\u2019 by a meteorite impact, marking it as the first and only known shocked zircon from Mars,\u201d Dr Cavosie said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis new study takes us a step further in understanding early Mars, by way of identifying tell-tale signs of water-rich fluids from when the grain formed, providing geochemical markers of water in the oldest known Martian crust.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lead author Dr Jack Gillespie from the University of Lausanne was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Curtin\u2019s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the time of the study, which was co-authored by researchers from Curtin\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/research.curtin.edu.au\/sstc\/\">Space Science and Technology Centre<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/jdlc.curtin.edu.au\/\">John de Laeter Centre<\/a> and the University of Adelaide, with funding from the Australian Research Council, Â鶹ֱ²¥, University of Adelaide and the Swiss National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The full study, titled \u2018<em>Zircon evidence for early hydrothermal activity on Mars\u2019<\/em>, was published in <em>Science Advances<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Â鶹ֱ²¥-led research has uncovered what may be the oldest direct evidence of ancient [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4307,"featured_media":26775,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"6582,4741,5335,7113,7334,8188","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[1066],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-26774","media-release","type-media-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-and-physics","tag-sstc"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":[{"title":"","qualification":"","link":"","description":"","faculty":""}],"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}},"experts":false},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/RESZIED-FOR-WEB-1_Mars_NWA7034-1000x500.jpg","author_meta":{"first_name":"Lucien","last_name":"Wilkinson","display_name":"Lucien Wilkinson"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/26774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-release"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-release\/26774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26774"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=26774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}