THE long-vanished oceans of Mars were salty, just like Earth鈥檚, say
researchers studying Martian meteorites.
Carleton Moore of Arizona State University in Tempe and his colleagues
drilled into part of the 1.2-billion-year-old Nakhla meteorite, found in Egypt
in 1911, to get an uncontaminated sample. In the July issue of Meteoritics
& Planetary Science, they report finding high levels of water-soluble
ions such as sodium and chloride, as well as sulphates, magnesium and
calcium.
鈥淭he salts we found mimic the salts in Earth鈥檚 ocean fairly closely,鈥� Moore
says. He thinks evaporating brine deposited these salts in cracks in the Martian
rock from which the meteorite came.
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