MSL: Mars Rock-Ingredient Stew Seen as Plus for Habitability

[bystander]

Mars Rock-Ingredient Stew Seen as Plus for Habitability
NASA | JPL-Caltech | MSL Curiosity | 2016 Dec 13

[c][imghover=https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file ... otated.png]https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file ... otated.png[/imghover]This pair of drawings depicts the same location at Gale Crater on at two points in time:
now and billions of years ago. Water moving beneath the ground, as well as water above
the surface in ancient rivers and lakes, provided favorable conditions for microbial life,
if Mars has ever hosted life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech[/c][hr][/hr]

NASA's Curiosity rover is climbing a layered Martian mountain and finding evidence of how ancient lakes and wet underground environments changed, billions of years ago, creating more diverse chemical environments that affected their favorability for microbial life.

Hematite, clay minerals and boron are among the ingredients found to be more abundant in layers farther uphill, compared with lower, older layers examined earlier in the mission. Scientists are discussing what these and other variations tell about conditions under which sediments were initially deposited, and about how groundwater moving later through the accumulated layers altered and transported ingredients.

Effects of this groundwater movement are most evident in mineral veins. The veins formed where cracks in the layers were filled with chemicals that had been dissolved in groundwater. The water with its dissolved contents also interacted with the rock matrix surrounding the veins, altering the chemistry both in the rock and in the water. ...

First Detection of Boron on the Surface of Mars
New finding provides more clues about water habitability
Los Alamos National Laboratory | 2016 Dec 13

[neufer]

A bold Hippopotamus was standing one day
On the banks of the cool Shalimar
He gazed at the bottom as it peacefully lay
By the light of the evening star.
Away on a hilltop, sat combing her hair
Was a fair Hippopotami maid;
The Hippopotamus was no ignoramus
And sang her this sweet serenade:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

'Mud, Mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!
So follow me, follow
Down to the hollow
And there let us wallow
In glorious mud'

The fair Hippopotama he aimed to entice
From her seat on that hilltop above
As she hadn't got a Ma to give her advice
Came tiptoeing down to her love.
Like thunder the forest re-echoed the sound
of the song that they sang when they met
His inamorata adjusted her garter
And lifted her voice in duet (in Russian)

The bold Hippopotami began to convene
On the banks of that river so wide
I wonder, now, what am I to say of the scene
That ensued by the Shalimar side?
They dived all at once, with an ear-splitting splosh
Then rose to the surface again
A regular army
of Hippopotami
All singing this haunting refrain:

'Mud, Mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me, follow
Down to the hollow
And there let us wallow
In glorious mud'!