Of the thousands of meteorites found on Earth, about 188 have been confirmed to be from Mars. How did they get here? Over the tumultuous history of our Solar System, asteroids have smashed into Mars with such force, the debris was blasted into space...
Mars
Astronomers once thought it was a complex process, with only the most powerful impacts capable of throwing rocks from Mars into space. But new research shows that it takes much less pressure than previously believed, which means there could be more chunks of Mars floating in space and on their way to Earth.
A team of planetary scientists from Caltech used a new and powerful blast gun to simulate an impact on Mars. So not to harm any of the limited and precious supply of Mars meteorites, they used rocks from Earth containing plagioclase, which is a major component of Martian rocks.impact, plagioclase transforms into the glassy material known as maskelynite. According to the researchers, finding maskelynite in a rock indicates the types of pressure the sample came into contact with.
Liu and Caltech professor Paul Asimow said that previous experiments had shown that plagioclase turns into maskelynite at a shock pressure of 30 gigapascals , which is 300,000 times the atmospheric pressure experienced at sea level, or 1,000 times the pressure a submersible comes into contact with while diving beneath 3 kilometers of ocean water.
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It's Surprisingly Easy to Hurls Rocks From Mars Into SpaceOf all the thousands of meteorites found on Earth, about 188 have been confirmed to be from Mars. How did they get here? Over the tumultuous history of our Solar System, asteroids have smashed into Mars with such force, the debris was blasted into space and then drifted through space, eventually entering the Earth’s atmosphere, … Continue reading 'It's Surprisingly Easy to Hurls Rocks From Mars Into Space'
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