The Discovery Of The Viking Lander Experiment

They have found that there might have been life on Mars at one point and there might still be little bits of life. All they have found so far is evidence of little tiny organisms and bacteria that were once on the surface.

Gerta Keller, professor of geosciences at Princeton University, has recently conducted research on the Chicxulub asteroid in which she analyzed new core samples taken from the asteroid site (Botzer 2004). These samples indicate that the impact that occurred at Chicxulub actually predated the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, which occurred at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary about sixty-five million years ago. Keller claims that the Chicxulub impact occurred approximately 300,000 years before the extinction (Keller 2004). Although previous researchers estimated that the Chicxulub asteroid was the cause of the extinctions, there had always been doubts about the exact age and size of the crater, and about the origin of the “mega tsunami deposits” that were located within the crater (Keller 2004). The focus of Keller’s recent research was on finding some answers to these questions. To do so she analyzed Cretaceous limestone, dolomite, and anhydrite deposits as the site of the Chicxulub crater (Keller 2004).

Silicious lava, forced up from deep down below. Soda trachytes extruded in a highly viscous state, building the steep-sides mametons we see in Hanging Rock. And quite young, geologically speaking. Barely a millions years old. (Greene, 11)

On the first side of the outcrop the rock when examined was greenish and had small black grains indicative of diorite with hornblende giving the green color. The rock was similar to the outcrop encountered at Hollow rock which also had several fractures parallel although not as many, and that outcrop was also highly weathered. On the other side of the outcrop, the rock was incredibly different. This side was not weathered beyond recognition but

Before the sailor flybys in the 1960s, scientist thought Mars had water and life, even if it was just some sort of plantlike lichen. Mars has water, frozen underground and at the polar caps. There is (event(s) or object(s) that prove something) that this water has, in the past and present, flooded the surface in liquid from. Signs of wearing away can be

It cooled from a felsic intermediate magma which means medium silica content. After it cooled completely, the Boulder Creek Granodiorite was uplifted to the Earth’s surface due to the tectonic forces from the Ancestral Rockies mountain building event. This caused the granodiorite to be exposed to the surface creating a mountain-like structure which allows river to form and flow downstream. These rivers have high energy due to gravity and are able to transport big clasts of cobble size and deposit them at the bottom of the mountain. At the bottom of the river, the energy of the stream drops abruptly creating a poorly sorted conglomerate. As the stream continues to flow, it carries along sand to a beach environment. Here, the Lyons Formation is formed. Beach is an ideal environment for this formation because there a lot of sand and the oscillatory flow of the beach created ripple marks on the Lyons sandstone. Beach is usually a windy area, so it helps with the ripple formation and also the dry up the muddy area at the beach shore. This supports the evidence of mudcracks that were observed in the Lyons Formation. Based on the paleocurrent data from Morrison, CO, the wind was blowing to the East and these are the dip directions of the mudstone and sandstone beds. From the beach environment, these sea level advanced a little bit creating a shallow marine environment. This kind of environment supports the formation of the mudstone and sandstone where there is slow current. The water is shallow enough for sunlight to get to the bottom for the cyanobacteria, the earliest life on Earth, to obtain their nutrients and finally settle down in the beds forming ridge-like shape on the Lykins sandstone. With that depth of water, calcite is also able to precipitate out the water and is trapped in the pores of the sandstone. The Entrada and

Spirit stumbled across rocks that pointed to an earlier, unrulier Mars that was marked by impacts, explosive volcanism and subsurface water [source: NASA Mars]. "Water is key because almost everywhere we find water on Earth we find life," NASA's Web site. However, we are still unsure life existed on Mars.

Later on fossils were found and many people had their own interpretations on what these fossils. Those who believed in the biblical story of how the world came to believed that either it was God way of showing his creation as ordinates. Others believed that these fossils were the bones of the sinners who died in Noah’s flood. It was Darwin who then defined them as dead species from years before our time. Years later the specimens that Darwin became a celebrity for the specimens that he collected on his 5 year voyage.

Secondly, the photo taken of site E shows that it is most likely sedimentary rock. Since there is no pressure or heat in the sedimentary

I was very interested about fossils, if they do really occur. I took a look at the techniques of verifying if it is true that fossils do exist. In my research using the evolution website, I discovered that they were trying to prove the existence of fossils that is “things that are being preserved from previous geological age, to discover if extinct prehistoric animals like the dinosaur do exist. Because there were arguments about the holes that were seen on an ammonite were created by a limpet and was attached to it, the scientists researched on ammonites and the characteristics of the limpets in question. So to prove this hypothesis was their primary motivation that led to the discovery of fossils. From

The Yucatan-6 borehole provided significant evidence to suggest that there was an impact event that took place. The composition of the melt rock was believed to have been the result of an impact rather than volcanic events (Kring and Boynton, 1992). What allowed scientists to confirm this, was the surviving clasts of target rock they discovered within the melt, were similar to that seen In the Manicouagan impact crater. (Kring, 2007) Furthermore, these clasts were said to be composed of shocked quarts and feldspar, which are indicative of an impact

This process is similar to planetary differentiation which formed the core of Earth, thus iron meteorites are considered equivalents for the Earth's core. Pallasites are another group of meteorites, which are intimate mixtures of silicate crystals and iron-rich metal, and are thought to represent regions where achondrite and iron meteorite magmas were partly separated, such as the core-mantle boundaries of planetesimals, and provide us vital information about the process of

Orthogneiss: This gneiss, annotated as 1 in Figure 2, is a coarse, dark gray rock that contains clasts of diorite. The observed minerals include biotite, quartz, plagioclase, muscovite, and hornblende. The rock has a foliated texture, and an orientation of 042/38º NW. It is in contact with a granite pegmatite intrusion annotated as 7 in Figure 2. It is hard, and not easily broken apart.

Analysis of the Murchison meteorite revealed many amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The Murchison meteorite provided evidence that organic molecules can be formed outside the

Other samples of the clay were taken to laboratories to be analyzed. Part of the results showed a large concentration of platinum and iridium. These elements are very rare on the surface of the earth at the moment but they are present in meteoric dust that rains down from space at a known rate. That rate allowed for a measurement of how long it took for the clay to form.