This podcast is brought to you by CURRENT Redefine your Banking with Current The Future of personal Finance. Manage your money smarter, faster, and on the go. No hidden fees, instant transaction alerts, and savings goals you can actually achieve. I've been using Current for years and they're a great institution. If you'd like to get $50 by signing up to Current, please follow the link in the show notes Join Current Today and Experience Banking that Keeps up with you.
Welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast. This is a show where we discuss. The critical. Crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, and I'm your host Will Walden. NASA. 'S curiosity. Rover has unearthed geological evidence from the Gale Crater on Mars, suggesting it may have once hosted conditions akin to Earth potentially conducive to microbial life.
Now this discovery comes from the Rover's analysis of manganese rich sandstones, pointing to a time when the Red Planet might have had an oxygenated environment capable of supporting life forms. A recent study facilitated by the Chemcam instrument aboard Curiosity uncovered unusually high levels of manganese in rocks that once formed part of
an ancient lake bed. Published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets on May 1st, these findings suggest these sediments were likely deposited by flowing water, possibly from rivers or deltas. Now a spokesperson from the Los Angeles National Laboratory, Patrick Gazza, he's the lead author of the research commented on the rarity of the formations on Mars to the plants current lack of surface oxygen.
He said it's difficult for manganese oxide to form on the surface of Mars, so we didn't expect to find it in such high concentrations in a shoreline deposit, saying that this is a mystery surrounding the production of oxygen in Mars ancient atmosphere. Curiosity's Chemcam, which is a collaboration between Los Alamos and CNES, the French space agency, performs its analysis by zapping rocks with a laser to create a plasma, which is then studied to assess the elemental
makeup of Mars rocks. Now, this technique has been pivotal in identifying the chemical composition directly from the Martian surface. The structure of the sedimentary rocks examine reveals a composition of sands, silts, and muds. These findings indicate that the sandier, more porous rocks would have allowed groundwater to permeate more easily, potentially carrying oxygen in other elements like manganese into these deposits.
And on Earth, the presence of manganese is similar in geological settings often involves biological activity, which accelerates the oxidation processes necessary for manganese deposits. Now this parallel raises some intriguing possibilities about past life and its potential metabolic pathways on the Martian surface. The researchers consider the Gale Crater Lake bed environment a compelling analog to certain terrestrial habitats.
Nieto Lanza, the principal investigator for Chem Chem, remarked on the implications of these parallels. Singing the Gale Lake environment as revealed by these ancient rocks give us a window into a habitable environment. It looks surprisingly similar to places on Earth today, and since landing in the Gellcrater in 2012, Curiosity has sent back numerous reports suggesting the area was once awash with water.
These reports have progressively bolstered the hypothesis that Mars could have supported life, with the latest data reinforcing this view further, due to the conditions conducive to forming manganese oxide. The specifics of the manganese findings traced back to the Rover's earlier explorations in 2016, which initially detected manganese oxide in modest
amounts. The recent surge in manganese oxide levels discovered in the Murray Formation mud stones has reignited interest and speculation about the ancient Martian atmosphere's oxidative capabilities. Now, the manganese oxide concentrations found in the Murray Formation suggests a significant oxygen presence, A prerequisite for such mineral deposits.
This has LED scientists to speculate on the sources of mechanics of oxygen production on Mars in its ancient past, which remained largely a mystery, and the geological layering within Gale Crater provides further clues. The transition between 2 distinct geological units, nicknamed Sutton Island and Blunts Point, highlights varying sedimentation patterns, likely influenced by their proximity to
ancient water sources. This stratification suggests different environmental conditions across the crater, with coarser, larger grain sediments indicating more dynamic water activity, potentially from a nearby river delta or lake shoreline. And such environments would likely have been more conducive to the oxidation and depositing of manganese. Now, Gazda and his team show that there's a need for continued research, though.
They need to decode the complex geological and chemical processes that took place on Mars. And he said these findings point to larger processes occurring in the Martian atmosphere or surface water, and show that more work needs to be done to understand oxidation on Mars. Now, the existence of manganese oxide, particularly in high concentrations like these, it also suggests potential
biological activity. If microbial life did exist, these organisms might have utilized manganese for energy, similar to some microbial processes observed on Mars. And the implications of these findings extend beyond the geological and chemical characteristics of Mars.
They potentially reshape our understanding of the planet's habitability and the commonalities between Mars and Earth. During early histories and as research continues, the parallels drawn between Earth's and Mars past environments provide a fertile ground for speculation and deeper study into the conditions that might have supported life on Mars. E discovery feeds into a larger narrative of Mars as a once dynamic and perhaps habitable
planet. And looking forward, missions such as Curiosity continue to play a pivotal role in piercing together Mars environmental puzzle. Each layer of sediment examined in every chemical signature detected adds to our understanding of the Red Planet's past. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your
support. If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it. It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never miss an episode and each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stage Zero and please take care of yourselves and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.