{"id":4026,"date":"2015-04-13T11:05:11","date_gmt":"2015-04-13T16:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=4026"},"modified":"2015-04-12T15:36:55","modified_gmt":"2015-04-12T20:36:55","slug":"a-place-for-life-to-form-on-the-martian-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/a-place-for-life-to-form-on-the-martian-surface\/","title":{"rendered":"A place for life to form on the Martian surface?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4027\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/C2_0177MH0226000024E1_DXXX-1024x765.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4027\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4027\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/C2_0177MH0226000024E1_DXXX-1024x765-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Curiosity's mast and rover deck, where the air and ground temperature, and UV sensors are located. (Photo Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS)\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/C2_0177MH0226000024E1_DXXX-1024x765-300x224.jpg 300w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/C2_0177MH0226000024E1_DXXX-1024x765.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4027\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Curiosity&#8217;s mast and rover deck, where the air and ground temperature, and UV sensors are located. (Photo Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Thin films of liquid brines which could hypothetically support life may form daily on soil on Mars and evaporate overnight, according to a new study.<\/p>\n<p>The Curiosity rover, which is traversing Gale crater on equatorial region of Mars, has detected a type of salt called perchlorate. Perchlorate salts both lower the freezing temperature of water and can absorb water vapour from the atmosphere to form brines.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately the authors found that the ground temperature in Gale crater is too low to support microbial life as we know it on Earth, even if the brines are present.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nature.com\/articles\/doi:10.1038\/ngeo2412\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in <em>Nature Geoscience\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>April\u00a013<\/strong><span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_453723367\"><span class=\"aQJ\"><strong>, 2015<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4>F. Javier Mart\u00edn-Torres, Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, Granada, Spain, and Division of Space Technology, Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Lule\u00e5 University of Technology, Kiruna, Sweden<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; Thin films of liquid brines which could hypothetically support life may form daily on soil on Mars and evaporate overnight, according to a new study. The Curiosity rover, which is traversing Gale crater on equatorial region of Mars, has detected a type of salt called perchlorate. Perchlorate salts both lower the freezing temperature [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4027,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1348,533,1284],"class_list":["post-4026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-mars","tag-space","tag-water"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/C2_0177MH0226000024E1_DXXX-1024x765.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-12W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4028,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4026\/revisions\/4028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}