Washington, March 2 (IANS) After finding clinching evidence of the presence of water on Mars last month, NASA scientists have now unearthed a Martian meteorite in the Yamato glacier in Antarctica that features curved micro-tunnels consistent with moving water.
“The Red Planet is revealing the presence of an active water reservoir that may also have a significant carbon component,” said Everett Gibson, a scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, US.
According to NASA, the discovery is “reviving debate in the scientific community over life on Mars”.
The meteorite itself is 1.3 billion years old and is believed to have landed in Antarctica 50,000 years ago.
The meteorite also features tiny, carbon-rich ‘spherules’ squished in between the various layers of rock, a phenomenon similar to another Martian meteorite that landed in Egypt in 1911, said a NASA release.
The meteorites allow scientists to study these phenomenon up close which lets them perform a much wider array of tests.
“We can never eliminate the possibility of contamination in any meteorite. But these features are, nonetheless, interesting and show that further studies of these meteorites should continue,” said Lauren White from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.