Planet's Color May Not Be Due To Rust
The widespread idea that Mars is red due to rocks being rusted by the water that once flooded the red planet may not be correct.
Recent laboratory studies show that red dust may be formed by ongoing grinding of surface rocks and liquid water need not have played any significant role in the formation process.
These findings, which open up the debate about the history of water on Mars and whether it has ever been habitable, have been presented at the European Planetary Science Congress by Dr Jonathan Merrison.
“Mars should really look blackish, between its white polar caps, because most of the rocks at mid-latitudes are basalt. For decades we assumed that the reddish regions on Mars are related to the water-rich early history of the planet and that, at least in some areas, water-bearing heavily oxidized iron minerals are present,” said Dr. Merrison, of the Aarhus Mars Simulation Laboratory, Denmark
Accurate knowledge of the composition and mineralogy of the planet is vital in understanding the structure and evolution of the near-surface environment and its interaction with the atmosphere, as well as in searching for potential habitats on Mars.
Fine red dust covers Mars’s surface and is even present in Mars’s atmosphere, dominating the weather and sometimes becoming so thick that it plunges the planet into darkness. Even though dust is ubiquitous, we do not fully understand its physical, chemical and geological properties.
In their recent laboratory study, scientists at the Mars Simulation Laboratory have pioneered a novel technique to simulate the sand transport on Mars. They hermetically sealed sand (quartz) samples in glass flasks and mechanically “tumbled” them for several months, turning each flask ten million times.
After gently tumbling pure quartz sand for seven months, almost 10% of the sand had been reduced to dust. When scientists added powdered magnetite, an iron oxide present in Martian basalt, to the flasks they were surprised to see it getting redder as the flasks were tumbled.
“Reddish-orange material deposits, which resemble mineral mantles known as desert varnish, started appearing on the tumbled flasks. Subsequent analysis of the flask material and dust has shown that the magnetite was transformed into the red mineral hematite, through a completely mechanical process without the presence of water at any stage of this process,” said Dr Merrison.
"Mars would be a blackish color, like the image on the right, if not for the red dust that covers its surface. (Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Team/Europlanet)"
Source: Europlanet Media Centre
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