Space
Researchers may have figured out why Mars became uninhabited
According to scientists, “the primitive biosphere of the planet had the effect of self-destruction.”
A new climate modeling study suggests that ancient microbes caused a climate change on Mars that made the planet less habitable, possibly leading to their extinction.
The article was published in the journal Nature Astronomy .
According to the study, simple microbes that feed on hydrogen and emit methane may have flourished on Mars around 3.7 billion years ago, around the same time that primitive life took hold in Earth’s primordial oceans.
But while on Earth the emergence of simple life gradually created an environment conducive to more complex life forms, the exact opposite happened on Mars, according to a team of scientists led by astrobiologist Boris Sauterey of the Institut de Biologie de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure (IBENS) in Paris.
Sautray and his team ran sophisticated computer simulations that simulated the interaction of what is already known about Mars’ ancient atmosphere and lithosphere with hydrogen-consuming microbes like those that existed on ancient Earth.
The researchers found that while on Earth, the methane produced by these microbes gradually warmed the planet, Mars instead cooled, driving the microbes deeper and deeper into the Earth’s crust to survive.
“At that time, Mars was relatively humid and relatively warm, between minus 10 and 20 degrees Celsius. On its surface was liquid water in the form of rivers, lakes, and possibly oceans. But its atmosphere was very different from Earth’s,” the scientist said.
Being farther away from the Sun than Earth, and therefore naturally colder, Mars needed these greenhouse gases to maintain a comfortable temperature for life.
But when these early microbes began to consume hydrogen and produce methane (which acts as a powerful greenhouse gas on Earth), they actually slowed down this warming greenhouse effect, gradually making ancient Mars so cold that it became inhospitable.
As the planet cooled, more of its water turned to ice and surface temperatures dropped below minus 60 degrees Celsius, pushing microbes deeper and deeper into the crust, where warmer conditions persisted.
While the microbes may have originally lived comfortably just below the sandy surface of Mars, over the course of a few hundred million years they were forced to retreat to depths of more than 1 km, simulations have shown.
Sautray and his team identified three places where traces of these ancient microbes were most likely preserved closer to the surface.
These locations include Jezero Crater, where the NASA rover is currently hunting for rock samples that may contain traces of this ancient life, and two low-lying plains: the Hellas Plain in the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere and the Isidis Plain north of the Martian plain.
A former US Air Force fighter pilot asserts that he has deciphered
the method behind the extraordinary maneuvers of UFOs, reports dailystar.co.uk.
Over
the past two decades, numerous military encounters with these enigmatic
crafts have been reported, prompting a significant investigation by the
Pentagon.
One of the most renowned sightings occurred during the
USS Nimitz encounter, where fighter pilots witnessed a UFO descending
from 28,000 feet to just above sea level in less than a second.
This
astonishing movement would imply that the craft reached a staggering
speed of 19,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would be fatal to any
human pilot.
According
to Chris Lehto, a former USAF pilot, the craft exhibits two key
characteristics: it moves without inertia, essentially lacking weight,
and it accelerates at an incredibly rapid pace without affecting its
surroundings.
Image: NATO Allied Air Command/Facebook
Chris
believes that the explanation lies within a technology that seems
straight out of science fiction. He proposes that the answer to the UFO
enigma lies in the Alcubierre Drive, a theoretical interstellar engine
conceptualized by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.
The
Alcubierre Drive employs a form of “space warp” technology, reminiscent
of what has been depicted in episodes of Star Trek. By bending space, a
craft inside a “warp bubble” could potentially travel at or even
surpass the speed of light without violating the known laws of physics.
While
the Alcubierre Drive remains a hypothetical concept with challenges to
overcome, Chris notes that the required energy is no longer believed to
be unattainably large.
Patents
filed with the US patent office outline the potential workings of the
drive, as well as another groundbreaking technology theorized by
American aerospace engineer Salvatore Pais.
Pais suggests that
high-powered rotating magnets could theoretically eliminate an object’s
inertia, and he has filed a patent for a starship based on this
principle.
However, Chris maintains skepticism regarding Pais’
theory. He explains that while Pais’s patent applications for the US
Navy attracted attention for their potential energy-related
applications, doubts have been raised about their feasibility. There is
speculation that they may be scams, pseudoscience, or disinformation
intended to mislead adversaries of the United States.
Alternatively,
rival theories propose that the “Tic Tac” UFO is a classified Pentagon
project testing similar advanced technologies discussed by Chris.
Scientists say they have found evidence of a new Earth-like
planet that has suddenly appeared in our Solar System and is orbiting
the Sun.
Physicists, including those from the National Astronomical Observatory
of Japan, said the planet is likely to be the mysterious ‘Planet Nine’
that was hypothesised to exist in the far outer edges of the Solar
System.
Several studies in the past have suggested there is likely an
undiscovered planet beyond the Kuiper Belt – a stellar disk of materials
such as asteroids, space rocks, comets around the Sun in the outer
Solar System past the orbit of Neptune.
Independent.co.uk reports: In the new research, published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists
found that some of the objects in the Kuiper Belt behave in a way
indicative of the presence of a small planet among them.
One such object, they said, is about 500 astronomical units (AU) from
the Sun, where 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
In comparison Neptune is at a distance of 30 AUs from the Sun.
Some of these were also found to have “odd” orbits suggesting they
are being pull by the gravity of a cosmic entity larger than those that
typically influence such objects.
Computer simulations run by the scientists indicate that the most
likely explanation for the observations was another hidden planet in the
Kuiper Belt.
“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet,” researchers wrote in the study.
“It is plausible that a primordial planetary body could survive in
the distant Kuiper Belt as a Kuiper Belt planet (KBP), as many such
bodies existed in the early solar system,” they added.
If such a planet exists, researchers say it would have a mass about
1.5 to 3 times that of Earth with an inclination of about 30 degrees.
They say the theorised planet’s orbit would likely place it between 250 and 500 AU from the Sun.
Researchers say the discovery of such a planet close to the Kuiper
Belt can unravel new constraints on planet formation and evolution.
“In conclusion, the results of the KBP scenario support the existence
of a yet-undiscovered planet in the far outer solar system,” scientists
noted.
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