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There are creatures on Mars?

Curiosity sent back bizarre photos, like a tree trunk and like a wind-dried snake

By Mao Jiao LiPublished about a year ago 5 min read
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Mars

The Curiosity rover is approaching its 10th anniversary of landing on Mars, and after 10 years of operation, it is still traveling on the lowland edge of the Martian Elysium Plain, having traveled a cumulative distance of 28 kilometers.

That's a lot of miles in ten years, which may seem like a cheat since on Earth the distance only takes half an hour, but Curiosity has been the longest-traveling and longest-running rover, thanks in large part to Curiosity's nuclear-powered design system, which will allow it to continue operating for several more years without failure.

February 2021

Curiosity, which has been working diligently on Mars for a decade, was forgotten for a while after the successful landing of Trailhead in Mars' Jezero Crater.

But recently Curiosity was hotly debated again because it was photographed on the surface of Mars two strange objects, both like tree trunks and like weathered dead snakes, to know whether tree trunks or snakes are enough to overturn the scientists' knowledge of Mars, so what exactly is the object in the photo?

Has life existed on Mars?

As early as 1971, the Soviet Union's Mars III probe successfully landed on the surface of Mars, although 20 seconds after the first photo encountered a sandstorm, resulting in its loss of contact with the Earth, but still collected the atmospheric data of Mars when circling, more than forty years several countries have launched more than thirty Mars exploration program, although two-thirds of them failed, but still can not stop the scientists on Mars enthusiasm Mars is one of the four major groups of the solar system.

Mars is one of the four terrestrial planets in our solar system. Like Earth, it is in the habitable zone, and although its diameter is only half that of Earth, its rotation period is similar to that of Earth, so the day is basically 24 hours long, and there are also four seasons.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States became the main force in the exploration of Mars, with one probe passing over the planet and then landing directly on Mars, to assess the basic environment of Mars, determine whether it can provide basic conditions for human survival, and explore the mystery of Martian life.

Late 19th century

astronomers using telescopes observed canal-like reticulation systems on Mars and ventured to guess that Martians should have existed and developed a Martian civilization, but unfortunately when the Mars rovers landed on the Martian surface, they saw only a desolate world: no so-called canals or Martians, but rather a large number of gravel blocks and solidified lava flows.

The widespread distribution of iron oxide makes Mars visually red, and craters with ridges and dunes are everywhere, in short, the first impression that life cannot survive here.

Unlike Earth, Mars has a very weak magnetic field, which causes most of its atmosphere to be stripped away by the solar wind, with less than 1% of Earth's atmospheric density. And the atmosphere is dominated by carbon dioxide, which accounts for 95.3% of the total atmosphere, and only 0.15% of the remaining gases are oxygen.

Mars

From this point of view, Mars is not suitable for the survival of carbon-based life, and the surface of Mars is very dry, with no liquid water, just like the Gobi Desert on Earth, the temperature difference between day and night is also very large, sometimes reaching nearly two hundred degrees.

In this case

Curiosity sent back photos, of the strange object that can not be a tree trunk or a dead snake, what is this thing in the end? From the available information, the probability of this thing is a rock, which will have to have readers are not happy, rocks we see a lot on Earth, how will be this kind of rock like a tree branch?

Experts, it is likely that billions of years ago, a crack in the sedimentary rocks here, these sedimentary rocks consist of sand and water layers, so the overall structure is relatively loose, and then a hard gelatinous object filled the crack, billions of years of exposure and gale, the sedimentary rocks disintegrated into pieces.

But because the gelatinous filler in the fracture was hard, when the fragments were blown away by the wind, it left this gelatinous mass, which looked like half a stump.

This result is inevitably a big disappointment

However, although Mars does not exist now, but does not mean that there is no life in the past, according to the data returned by a large number of probes, Mars there are a large number of lakes and there are sedimentary layers, and these sedimentary layers and some landforms only water erosion will cause, which means that Mars at some time there was a lot of water, the same as the Earth's surface was covered by the ocean.

But then the core of Mars cooled and the magnetic field disappeared, causing the Martian atmosphere to be constantly bombarded by the solar wind and cosmic high-energy rays and eventually stripped away and dissipated, which led to a decrease in Martian air pressure and the disappearance of large amounts of water evaporated without the protection of the magnetic field.

So is it possible that a human-like civilization was born when Mars was habitable?

Scientists believe that the habitable time of Mars lasted only one billion years, analogous to the evolutionary speed of the Earth's creatures, the first billion years of the Earth was just born cyanobacteria, until the 3.5 billionth year when trees appeared, so at this rate, Mars may have existed some single-celled organisms, but it is impossible to evolve higher intelligent animals.

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About the Creator

Mao Jiao Li

When you think, act like a wise man; but when you speak, act like a common man.

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