It\u2019s impossible to know what Mars looked like billions of years ago, but one robotic explorer\u2019s intrepid sleuthing is giving astronomers a peek into the past. <\/p>\n
The NASA Perseverance rover just marked 1,000 days on the red planet. Percy has completed its investigation of an ancient river delta that fed into\u00a0a Martian surface feature called\u00a0Jezero Crater. <\/p>\n
By studying and sampling rocks\u00a0<\/strong>since landing in February 2021, the rover has helped scientists piece together a timeline of\u00a0when a shallow lake filled the crater. <\/p>\n Now, the rover continues its quest to find signs of past life on the red planet. And a new discovery on Earth could provide scientists with an idea of what fossils may look like if they exist on Mars. <\/p>\n A previously hidden system of lagoons in Puna de Atacama, an arid plateau in northwestern Argentina, is providing a rare window into what ecosystems were like on early Earth billions of years ago. <\/p>\n Within the lagoons are living fossils called giant stromatolites, or layered rocks created by algae and minerals such as gypsum and rock salt. <\/p>\n The inhospitable environment of the high salt plains is often compared with Mars. But since the red planet was likely covered with lakes and perhaps an ocean billions of years ago, Mars may have once been more similar to Earth. <\/p>\n \u201cIf we\u2019re going to find any sort of fossils on Mars, this is our best guess as to what they would be, because these are the oldest ones from the Earth rock record,\u201d said Brian Hynek, a professor in the department of geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. <\/p>\n Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus has long intrigued astronomers as an ocean world in our solar system that may support life. <\/p>\n Plumes of ice grains and water vapor rise from cracks in its thick, icy crust, hinting at the presence of a salty subsurface ocean. And now, a new analysis of data collected by NASA\u2019s Cassini mission has revealed hydrogen cyanide, a molecule that plays a key role in the processes driving the origin of life. <\/p>\n What\u2019s more, the research team found evidence that the moon has a chemical energy source driven by organic compounds. <\/p>\n Together, the presence of water, energy and the building blocks of life suggest that Enceladus might be the\u00a0best place to search for life beyond Earth. <\/p>\n Some of the most exciting art and archaeological\u00a0<\/strong>finds of the year were both unconventional and unexpected. <\/p>\n History sleuths identified the man carrying a bundle of sticks on the cover of Led Zeppelin\u2019s 1971 album commonly known as \u201cLed Zeppelin IV.\u201d <\/p>\n Researchers discovered the oldest known European shoes and unearthed a still glimmering Bronze Age sword. <\/p>\n And nearly 400-year-old murals emerged from behind a kitchen wall, while a\u00a0hidden hallway was found inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. <\/p>\n People who tend to rise early may owe some of the credit to Neanderthals, according to new research. <\/p>\n Neanderthals evolved while living at high latitudes in Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. Over time, our extinct relatives likely became better adapted to seasonal variations in daylight compared with early modern humans who lived closer to the equator in Africa. <\/p>\n This genetic legacy may have been passed on as humans migrated across the globe and encountered Neanderthals. It\u2019s just\u00a0one of many Neanderthal genes that have been traced\u00a0from ancient DNA and discovered in modern human populations. <\/p>\n A new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope has allowed astronomers their closest and most detailed look inside the remains of an exploded star. <\/p>\n It\u2019s the second time researchers have used Webb to observe Cassiopeia A, a glowing supernova remnant in our galaxy. <\/p>\n Some of the newly spotted features include\u00a0ghostly light echoes, which look like the offspring of the massive cosmic cloud. <\/p>\n Separately, a team of researchers observed a mysterious, repeating fast radio burst from space that has a never-before-seen quirk: The phenomenon has a\u00a0frequency that sounds like a celestial slide whistle. <\/p>\n Settle in and embark on a journey with these unusual reads: <\/p>\n \u2014 Engineers are trying to solve a computer glitch on the 46-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has stopped sending back scientific data as it explores the\u00a0outer edges of our solar system 15 billion miles away. <\/p>\n \u2014 The massive, well-preserved\u00a0skull of a prehistoric sea monster was found\u00a0on a beach in southern England and will be detailed in a documentary presented by legendary naturalist Sir David Attenborough. <\/p>\n \u2014 Scientists have discovered an\u00a0unusual phenomenon that keeps Himalayan glaciers cool\u00a0despite warming global temperatures. <\/p>\n\n It\u2019s impossible to know what Mars looked like billions of years ago, but one robotic explorer\u2019s intrepid sleuthing is giving astronomers a peek into the past. The NASA Perseverance rover just marked 1,000 days on the red planet. Percy has completed its investigation of an ancient river delta that fed into\u00a0a Martian surface feature called\u00a0Jezero <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Once upon a planet<\/h3>\n
Other worlds<\/h3>\n
Discoveries<\/h3>\n
We are family<\/h3>\n
Across the universe<\/h3>\n
Curiosities<\/h3>\n