Other
Scientific paper
Jan 1996
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996adspr..18..233b&link_type=abstract
Advances in Space Research, Volume 18, Issue 12, p. 233-240.
Other
2
Scientific paper
Climate models, Viking Lander experiments and SNC meteorites' analyses suggested the possibility that the Martian soil formed by chemical hydrolytic weathering of mafic rocks to produce layer-structured silicates (clay minerals), carbonates and crystalline ferric iron oxides. Search for such minerals on the surface of Mars has not been successful yet. Remote-sensing and simulation studies suggest that Mars soil mostly consists of poorly crystalline, non-evolved, short-range ordered or amorphous nanophase silicates and iron oxides. Apparently, this precludes the possibility of hydrolytic weathering on Mars and eliminates a primary requirement for abiotic evolution - the presence of liquid water over a long enough period. We propose, however, the possibility that Martian dust and soil are a relatively ``young'' weathering product that has formed, and continues to form at an extremely slow rate, over the last several hundred millions to a billion years. The global surface stability of Mars facilitates the accumulation of weathering products over long periods. Even at an extremely slow linear rate of rock-surface weathering of 0.3 nm/yr (~one molecular layer per year) an average layer of 30 cm could be weathered on Mars over the last 10^9 years. It is plausible that such ``recent'' (in Mars time scale of changes) and non-evolved weathering product is coating or burying ancient, more evolved weathered mineral assemblages that formed in the earlier ``warm and wet'' epochs of Mars. Obviously, in order to be successful, the search for mineral markers and other clues for abiotic evolution during these purported earlier epochs, should penetrate the ``recent'' coating.
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