Part of Black Beauty’s fame comes from its origins. It’s a piece of Mars that fell to Earth, probably after a large impact on the Red Planet.
It is composed of material from around 4.48 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest known Martian materials in the Solar System. Not to mention it’s strikingly beautiful – hence its name.
Unfortunately, previous studies have required scientists to cut out parts of this masterpiece in order to study it. These parts are then crushed or dissolved to reveal the materials that make up the rock.
According to , it is possible to do better than that, with the advent of computed tomography (TC).
One, available in preprint on arXiv, by Estrid Naver of the Technical University of Denmark and her co-authors, describes the use of two of these (relatively) new tools on one of the world’s most famous meteorites – the NWA 7034 – also known as Black Beauty.
There are two types of CT scanners. One of them, commonly used in doctors’ offices around the world, is the x-ray tomograph —exceptionally good at locating heavy, dense materials such as iron or titanium.
Another, less common, method is neutron CTwhich uses neutrons instead of X-rays to pass through the object of study. The results of this research vary greatly, but it is generally best for penetrating denser materials and, most importantly, for detecting hydrogen – one of the main components of water.
In the article, the iResearchers use both techniques to non-destructively test Black Beauty and see what it contained. Although non-destructive, they admitted to having used only a small sample of the meteorite, which had been previously polished. But when they analyzed the small sample, found clasts.
In geological terms, a clast is just a word for a small fragment of rock trapped inside a larger rock.
Finding clasts isn’t surprising—scientists have known for decades that Black Beauty was composed of them, which makes sense given that it was known that the origin of the meteorite was a Martian impact that melted rocks.
But the The specific types of clasts the TCs found were new.
Known as “hydrogen-rich iron oxyhydroxide” or H-Fe-oxthese hydrogen-rich clumps represented approximately 0.4% of the volume of the Black Beauty sample they tested, which was about the size of a fingernail.
Although it may seem like a small amount, the chemical mathematics of the meteorite’s interior means that these small pieces of rock contain up to about 11% of the total water content of the sample.
Black Beauty itself has an estimated 6,000 parts per million (ppm) of water, which is extremely high for a planet with so little water these days. But, these findings complement the discovery of aqueous samples in Jezero crater pela Perseverance.
Even though Black Beauty comes from a completely different part of Mars than the rover samples, the connection between the samples proves that There was widespread liquid water on the surface of Mars billions of years ago.
This beautiful meteorite is, in itself, basically a mission to collect samples from a single rock. However, the scientists who analyzed it hoped to use the same non-destructive CT techniques on future samples from the Mars Sample Return mission.
CT scans can see through the titanium box in which the samples were collected.
But given the recent cancellation of that program, it could be a long time before any direct planetary samples are subjected to the tools we have here on Earth.
However, there is still a Chinese sample collection mission planned, so it may not take as long as expected.
Teresa Oliveira Campos, ZAP //
