Many tiny flecks of ancient water are trapped inside the oldest and most famous Martian meteorite ever to fall to Earth, a new study has found. The surprising discovery, achieved using a new form of ‘neutron scanning’, reveals further clues about Mars’ watery past, which may have been the setting for the flourishing of extraterrestrial life.
Meteorite NWA 7034, commonly known as Black Beauty, is an approximately 11-ounce (320-gram) chunk of Mars that was ejected when another space rock crashed into the Red Planet. It was discovered in 2011 by nomads in the Moroccan region of the Sahara Desert, but it is unclear when it fell to Earth. Since then, this meteorite has become famous for its dark color, which was further accentuated by the intense polishing of one of its faces.
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Researchers have known since 2013 that black beauty contains trace amounts of water. Recent analyzes of meteorites have revealed evidence that this water may have been partially heated, raising hopes that Martian microbes may once have thrived in the planet’s warm waters.
But until now, researchers had to separate and destroy small chunks of meteorites to properly study the water trapped inside them, limiting what they could learn from them, according to Universe Today.
But in a new study uploaded to the preprint server arXiv on January 13, researchers report that a new scanning method has enabled the first detailed analysis of the water content of an entire meteorite.
According to Universe Today, the test revealed that water likely made up about 0.6% of Black Beauty’s mass. This corresponds to a piece of rock the size of a human fingernail. This may not sound like a big deal, but it’s much more than previous estimates.
Most of this water is trapped in small pieces, or crusts, of hydrogen-rich iron oxyhydroxide (FeHO2). FeHO2 is similar to the main component of rust and is formed when iron reacts with water under high pressure, such as during a meteorite impact.
In the new study, researchers used a version of CT scan that uses X-rays to build internal images of soft objects, such as the human body. But instead of using electromagnetic radiation, the team bombarded the meteorite with neutrons. The neutrons turned out to be particularly good at identifying hydrogen atoms embedded in very dense samples.
You can see this process in action in a YouTube video shared by one of the researchers.
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water on mars
It’s hard to imagine that the dusty red ball of today’s Mars was once a world of water. But growing evidence suggests that the planet was once home to a large Earth-like ocean until about 3 billion years ago.
Much of this water has since disappeared, but some remains in the form of buried ice slabs near the Earth’s equator, frosty deposits atop Martian mountains, and a giant underground reservoir discovered in 2024.
Black Beauty is widely considered to be the oldest direct evidence of water on Mars, and could help us understand how the planet first acquired its once-abundant water. Therefore, researchers are keen to further analyze its interior.
Given that NASA recently canceled plans for a Mars sample return mission that would have brought samples collected by the rover Perseverance back to Earth, meteorites like Black Beauty are the only way to directly study water on Mars.
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