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"Leopard Spots and Poppy Seeds: Recent Developments in The Search for Evidence of Ancient Life on Mars" by Michael Velbel
April 3 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm EDT
Free
NOTE: This presentation will be streamed live on Zoom. Follow the link to register.
The current Mars 2020 mission with its rover Perseverance is the first step in the campaign to retrieve Martian samples. The most promising sample collected to date, called Sapphire Canyon, and the rock called Cheyava Falls from which it was collected, both contain features informally called “leopard spots” and “poppy seeds." The rock contains organic carbon, and the features of interest contain minerals with different combinations of oxidized iron (rust) and reduced iron, sulfur, and phosphorous. As NASA media reported: “The combination of these minerals, which appear to have formed by electron-transfer reactions between the sediment and organic matter, is a potential fingerprint for microbial life, which would use these reactions to produce energy for growth … Scientists think the spots may indicate that, billions of years ago, the chemical reactions in this rock could have supported microbial life; other explanations are being considered.” I will discuss the significance of these latest findings as we eagerly await the retrieval and return of Perseverance’s samples.
About the Speaker:
Michael Velbel (Ph.D., Yale University, 1984) is emeritus professor of geological sciences at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. He studies regolith geoscience and the rates and mechanisms of mineral-water interactions during rock and mineral weathering. His research investigates the geological, mineralogical, geochemical, and geomorphic factors that control mineral alterations at the Earth's surface and the migration of chemical elements through the landscape, emphasizing small-watershed geochemistry. Related areas of research include terrestrial weathering of Antarctic and non-Antarctic meteorites; rock, mineral, and chemical weathering on Mars and in Martian meteorites; recognition of pre-terrestrial aqueous alteration on other meteorite parent bodies from mineralogical investigations of meteorites; and preservation of sample integrity for past and future sample-return missions. He was a member of the Mineralogy-Petrology subteam of the NASA Stardust mission Preliminary Examination Team (2006). In addition to MSU, Prof. Velbel has held visiting appointments at the University of Cincinnati, the Faculté des Sciences-St Jérôme of the Université Paul Cézanne (Université d'Aix-Marseilles III), the Australian National University, and the (Australian) Cooperative Research Centre for Landscape Evolution and Mineral Exploration (CRC-LEME). He held NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowships at the NASA Johnson Space Center in 1987 and 1999 and was a Smithsonian Senior Fellow at the Division of Meteorites, Department of Mineral Sciences, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, 2012-2013.
