Ray's Clays
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Ray Arvidson, a geologist from Washington University, nearly jumped for
joy when he discovered a mineral named, "Kaolinite" in some clays in the
FIDO landing site area. If he would have found the same mineral in
mud-like material on Mars, he would have "run down the street waving the
papers!"
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Ray Arvidson, Meredith Berwick, Ed Guiness |
As far as we know it, in order to have life, a planet must have water.
Kaolinite is a mineral that only forms in the presence of water, so if
Ray and the Mars Exploration Rover team were to find this mineral in
clay on Mars, it would confirm that liquid water once flowed on Mars,
which opens up a wider possibility that life may have existed there at
one time.
First of all, scientists were excited to see material on the ground that
looked like cracked clay (or mud) because the texture of clay is fragile
and the cracks don't last long, meaning recent storm activity must have
taken place. Features like this are formed by rain, as sediments travel
down a valley. As storms subside, fine grains collect together in a
"slack." Slack is a term geologists use for mud puddles which form
after rains slow down. "Just like a slacker is slow, this "slack" forms
when wet material bonds with fine, slow moving grains of soil."
The cracks and texture of the soil provide evidence that some "liquid"
slowed down here long enough to create clay. Now, the challenge was to
discover what kind of liquid formed the clay. Was it water?
When clays get wet, they expand, and when the liquid evaporates, the
clays shrink and crack as one can see in this image. These cracks
become was Ray calls, "Mother Nature's collection bowls." The cracks
contain minerals that were previously stripped from rocks upstream and
flowed down the valley with the liquid, coming to rest deep within the
clay. Ray and the science team thus decided to turn on the robotic
geologists' infrared instruments to look for the release of energy
signals given off by specific minerals.
After running through over 100 types of mineral spectra, the soil team
found a "double-dip" fingerprint match to kaolinite in the cracks of the
clay (see spectra chart). Since kaolinite only forms in the presence of
water, these clays must have been formed by water. (The scientists had
predicted the mineral would be kaolinite because the clays were a white
color and kaolinite is a white mineral. Kaolinite is the mineral that
makes both paper and Kaopectate white!)
Even more exciting is the new hypothesis that there must be a bigger
source of kaolinite upstream of this location. Now the scientists want
to go find the original source of the kaolinite to see if the water that
flowed in this area came from an ancient ocean or out of ancient
volcanoes.