You might think that Mars, our planetary neighbor, would be a lot like Earth, right?
Well, in some ways it is, but a new study shows a big difference: Mars has far fewer kinds of minerals than Earth does!
Earth is home to nearly 6,000 different types of minerals, the stuff that rocks are made of.
But on Mars, scientists have found only 161 types, despite decades of studying the Red Planet with missions and even looking at Mars rocks that landed on Earth as meteorites.
So, why does Mars have so few minerals?
According to researchers led by Hazen and his team, Mars just didn’t have as many ways for minerals to form compared to Earth.
Although both planets started with similar building blocks, Mars missed out on some processes that make Earth so diverse in minerals.
To get a clear picture, scientists have been studying how minerals came to be on both planets. For Earth, there are 57 known ways that minerals can form.
These include things like cooling down molten rock, or magma, to form crystals. On Mars, however, researchers found only 20 ways for minerals to form. That’s a big difference!
Both planets did start out somewhat alike. In their early years, minerals on Mars and Earth probably came from cooling magma.
They both also likely had hot water moving through rocks, which can create new minerals. But after that, Earth got more creative in making minerals, while Mars didn’t.
One big reason is that Earth has something called plate tectonics. Imagine Earth’s surface like a giant puzzle with pieces that move.
These moving pieces can cause earthquakes, make mountains, and create new pathways for minerals to form. Mars doesn’t have this.
Life on Earth also played a big part. Living things like plants and even tiny microbes can affect rocks and help create new types of minerals.
Mars doesn’t have living things (as far as we know), so it missed out on this way of making minerals too.
Scientists believe there might still be minerals on Mars that we haven’t found yet. But even if we find more, they think that Mars will still have way fewer types of minerals than Earth.
According to their study, the number of minerals on Mars might be “an order of magnitude” smaller. That’s a fancy way of saying Mars could have ten times fewer minerals than Earth.
So what does this all mean? Understanding the minerals on Mars helps us understand the planet’s history, including whether it could have ever supported life.
Fewer minerals might mean fewer chances for life to start. But more than that, it’s a reminder that even if planets start out alike, they can end up very different!
This research is fresh off the press and can be found in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
So, next time you’re looking at a rock, think about how Earth’s rich mineral collection tells the story of our unique planet, and how different Mars is from us.
Their study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
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