Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Opportunity Zooms In on Martian Bedrock [Scientific American] The rock looks so much like shale, I keep expecting to see a trilobite fossil! They haven't found any yet, but already there have been surprises: "Embedded in it like blueberries in a muffin are these little spherical grains," Squyres says. There are two possible explanations for their formation, he notes. They could have formed out of molten rock that was thrown into the atmosphere by an extreme event such as a volcano or an impact with a meteorite. Alternatively, they could be concretions of minerals that came out of solution as water moved through the rock. Wild! 9:39:33 AM     leave/read comments []