The Mars rover Opportunity continues to amaze:
A few days ago… Opportunity’s controllers noticed an odd-looking, football-shaped rock lying in the red dust. They named the rock “Bounce”…
The main ingredient in Bounce is a volcanic mineral called pyroxene… The high proportion of pyroxene means Bounce not only is unlike any other rock studied by Opportunity or Spirit, but also is unlike the volcanic deposits mapped extensively around Mars by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, Rogers said.
Bounce’s chemical composition exactly matches that of a meteorite that hit the ground in Shergotty, India, on Aug. 25, 1865… A less-distinctively named shergottite, EETA79001, found in Antarctica in 1979, has a composition even closer to Bounce’s.
As a result, NASA scientists are convinced Shergotty, EETA79001 and Bounce — and maybe a couple dozen other Martian rocks that found their way to Earth — were ejected from Mars by the impact of a large asteroid or comet.
Bounce provides conclusive evidence not only of Martian meteorites on Earth, but also of the possibility of cross-seeding… The discovery of Bounce raises the distinct possibility that life arising from a common source could have existed for a time on both worlds.
Kind of puts your “accomplishment” of alphabetizing your cooking spices into perspective, huh? (Via: Slashdot)
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