tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30281186658101628342024-03-13T21:55:58.175-07:00ConfusedgeologistSam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-69018868834569253882021-06-10T04:01:00.002-07:002021-06-10T04:49:58.238-07:00Evidence of Martian Life Found in a Holland and Barretts?<p>With my looming redundancy date and seemingly receiving even
more rejections than jobs I’ve applied for it was refreshing to get some good
news this morning. We’ve had another paper accepted on our work on why answering
the question “Is there life on Mars?” is actually really difficult (with
current techniques).</p><p>This one has the typically short and punchy title of:'Transformation of cyanobacterial biomolecules by iron oxides during flash pyrolysis: Implications for Mars life detection missions'. Sadly I couldn't get my preferred title (see above) passed my co-authors...</p><p>It'll probably be a few weeks until it's officially published online but there's an open access preprint <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352283368_Transformation_of_cyanobacterial_biomolecules_by_iron_oxides_during_1_flash_pyrolysis_Implications_for_Mars_life_detection_missions" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Around 4.5-4 billion years ago Mars was less of a Red Planet
and much more like the early Earth. At this point in time Mars still had a CO<sub>2</sub>
rich atmosphere, replenished by volcanoes and protected by an active
magnetosphere. This provided both a greenhouse effects and increased surface
pressure which meant liquid water was stable at the surface. Rivers flowed and
filled asteroid impact craters to form crater lakes which may have provided an
environment quite hospitable to life. <o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbuWk5NVifdb2CWBxhYzZTiawL0hjNnEruYauiA8wrxfcob5pAaCsY-3eRJoRv2IpagxJdN1o9N5vNQ7GKd_TwuJ41-ar7ta0_TfsbW4JKcUBLaqSqRiiiVofRCLKN1LPEsExtpdBv-0M/s850/Simulation-of-late-and-early-Mars.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="850" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbuWk5NVifdb2CWBxhYzZTiawL0hjNnEruYauiA8wrxfcob5pAaCsY-3eRJoRv2IpagxJdN1o9N5vNQ7GKd_TwuJ41-ar7ta0_TfsbW4JKcUBLaqSqRiiiVofRCLKN1LPEsExtpdBv-0M/w400-h225/Simulation-of-late-and-early-Mars.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early Mars was probably a much nicer place than it is today</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal">For this project I needed a life form that represented the
sort of organism that may have evolved and colonised these environments, the
remains of which could be preserved in the sort of lake sediments that NASA’s Curiosity
has been exploring at Gale Crater, Perseverance is exploring at Jezero Crater,
and ESA’s Rosalind Franklin may find at Oxia Planum in 2022.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What I needed was a simple, single-celled, prokaryotic
photosynthesiser, capable of adapting to extreme environments. I needed a
cyanobacteria, one form of which is the blue-green algal ‘scum’ which can cause
poisonous blooms in ponds, while another can be bought from your local health
food shop as a supplement to put in nutritious smoothies…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That’s right, we’re using <i>Spirulina</i> as a stand in for alien
life.<o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfwKfeT-lTAjMQCQ5CoEuArMCbZywdzI5Ol9yIuvKkIl71HHP9Xl4c8_hAIgsRPz_hGfMt9PFOPyAEVh6KraPpSRuSmf1Be9DavlZyOzF7Zz3NEKOD-XoQwFDVpOabQuG3qYMbeEEY8m0/s1729/spirulina+combined.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="671" data-original-width="1729" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfwKfeT-lTAjMQCQ5CoEuArMCbZywdzI5Ol9yIuvKkIl71HHP9Xl4c8_hAIgsRPz_hGfMt9PFOPyAEVh6KraPpSRuSmf1Be9DavlZyOzF7Zz3NEKOD-XoQwFDVpOabQuG3qYMbeEEY8m0/w400-h155/spirulina+combined.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tasty smoothie or alien life?</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal">In our <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2020/12/paper-summary-pyrolysis-of-carboxylic.html">last paper</a> we looked at how, when Mars rovers heat up
sediment samples any fatty acids present, which could be evidence of biological
processes, will react with iron oxides and be transformed into highly ambiguous
aromatic organic molecules which won’t look much like evidence of life at all. There's loads of background detail about the search for life on Mars in that <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2020/12/paper-summary-pyrolysis-of-carboxylic.html">post </a>and others (including <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2020/10/">here</a>, <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2019/05/washing-samples-to-detect-martian.html">here</a> and <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/10/summary-survivability-of-1.html">here</a>) so I'll keep this brief and won't repeat it all now (I'm quickly writing this while procrastinating rather than doing interview prep).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This time round we wanted to make the system a little more
complex by using whole bacteria (the <i>Spirulina</i>) to see if the same thing
happened with intact, pristine biological matter. Unsurprisingly we found out
that, yes, on heating the organic molecules released from the bacterial cells
will still react with the iron oxides, transform into more ambiguous phases,
and make it very difficult to be 100 % sure whether we’ve found life or not! The detected organic products look pretty much identical to those which could just have been delivered to the surface of Mars by meteorite impacts.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We did find some hope in that haematite, which is a common
iron oxide on Mars, is nowhere near as problematic as the other iron oxides we
studied, and that some biomolecules (isoprenoid hydrocarbons) had better survivability
than others, handily these are also the molecules most likely to survive over
the billions of years since Mars was widely habitable. We also
established that suites of molecules, which would be pretty much useless on
their own, could in combination be relatively strong evidence of life – and at
least be a good sign we should take a second look at the sample using a wider
variety of techniques.<o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig6HE7zStct3fz8k6wxWQTaY8c5KBCib43fHuOYYQpbvRKn-FfY0Pjz9BHztEDrDgIfUjIoWfNa8RNqul3P2JFKbp-D9aJC0fhJlX0xN4fjFegvNnmTfbYcQUmWWBpDWkOpvYA4cxqmGE/s2000/gcfid+chart.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1146" data-original-width="2000" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig6HE7zStct3fz8k6wxWQTaY8c5KBCib43fHuOYYQpbvRKn-FfY0Pjz9BHztEDrDgIfUjIoWfNa8RNqul3P2JFKbp-D9aJC0fhJlX0xN4fjFegvNnmTfbYcQUmWWBpDWkOpvYA4cxqmGE/w640-h366/gcfid+chart.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graph of detected products from the Spirulina pyrolysed on the various iron oxide minerals, quartz used as a less reactive comparison. The original biomolecules (the blue, purple, green) which would be solid evidence of life are lost and transformed into more ambiguous species represented by the yellow, red and black. AS can be seen survivability of 'useful' biomolecules is higher at lower <i>Spirulina</i> concentrations in the haematite than other iron oxides (quartz as expected only has minor adsorption effects)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal">As with the last paper, we came to the conclusion that despite
the problems, we shouldn’t try to avoid iron oxides altogether (this would be
pretty much impossible on Mars anyway, iron oxides being everywhere are the
reason it’s red). This is because iron oxides are both good for long term
preservation of organic matter (it sticks to iron which offers some protection,
known as the ‘rusty sink’ effect) and may indicate habitability as they are
often formed in the presence of water and could provide an energy source for
specialist microorganisms.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Instead, we should look for areas where any of the more
problematic iron-bearing species will have been transformed to more amenable haematite.
These are areas with evidence of long-lived (or shorter but hotter) oxidising
fluid flow in the subsurface. These areas, such as Vera Rubin Ridge at Gale
Crater and the clay units at Oxia Planum, have the added bonus of potentially
acted as a refugia for life as conditions at the martian surface became more
inhospitable. Bacteria may have retreated to them and eeked out an existence in
the subsurface, ‘feeding’ on energy produced in chemical reactions for
millions/billions of years after the water on the surface dried out.<o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE-anZ9S5XQGpkPQIt_C7EdeD82ghxnOgEYdXyo_OfL4akThqQUbdCrdLv-wonU57NDyhmQSEMEyaa1Pt49mWo7a2NzcZoY4r6xLAlz2RcD5jro4AHZVEWzzRu80fSY6-sUEejMbsJk1E/s1600/8918_pia21850-1785MR009211_sitesphericalmosaic_noscale-full2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="1600" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE-anZ9S5XQGpkPQIt_C7EdeD82ghxnOgEYdXyo_OfL4akThqQUbdCrdLv-wonU57NDyhmQSEMEyaa1Pt49mWo7a2NzcZoY4r6xLAlz2RcD5jro4AHZVEWzzRu80fSY6-sUEejMbsJk1E/w640-h136/8918_pia21850-1785MR009211_sitesphericalmosaic_noscale-full2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vera Rubin Ridge, as viewed by Curiosity, may be a good place to search for evidence of ancient life (credit NASA)</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal">The next step of this research, already submitted, is to
look at how ancient organic matter preserved over millions of years (in the
form of kerogen) reacts with these problematic iron oxides. It could be expected that this would to be
more resistant to transformation as it has already lost much of its reactant
groups but, spoiler alert, it’s not. Hopefully more details on that soon!</p><p class="MsoNormal">I should add that the publication of this paper also involved one of the best experiences of peer-review that I have had. Both reviewers clearly knew the topics and methods involved well and provided highly insightful comments picking up on mistakes and pointing out gaps in the manuscript and encouraging me to make it into a better, more impactful piece of work. I wish more reviewers were like this!</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-78169033027387271152021-02-19T05:40:00.003-08:002021-02-22T04:30:30.483-08:00Has NASA been covering up knowing about Life on Mars since the 70’s?<p>Apologies for the <a href="https://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/06/scientifically-accurate-non-clickbait.html" target="_blank">clickbait</a> title but the short answer is
no.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">However, this is something that came up a few times during our
live <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/lmorlo/we_are_searching_for_life_on_mars_working_on_the/">Reddit Q & A</a> session yesterday in the run up to Perseverance’s landing.
I only had time to go into it briefly then so I thought I’d expand here for
anyone who is interested in the details. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The real interesting question is: ‘Do some NASA scientists
believe they found evidence of life on Mars in the 70’s and still think they’re
being undeservedly ignored/silenced by the rest of the scientific community?’
Because the answer to that is a surprising yes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Planning for the first landed missions to Mars started
almost 70 years ago in the 1950’s. Back then it was thought that the surface of
Mars was a much more benign environment than we know it to be today. Early
observations of the planet seemed to suggest that there was seasonal vegetative
cover and serious scientists (including Carl Sagan) postulated the idea of large martian animals
roaming a landscape similar to Earth's in serious journals.
It wasn’t until the Mariner Mars orbiter missions in the mid-late ‘60s that we
got clear images back of the martian surface. While these showed it to be a more
hostile, empty desert environment with no signs of animal or plant life, nor
liquid water at the surface, the low resolution meant it did not preclude the existence of even <a href="https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/0019103576900397?token=CC2CAEF192D8F51E177CDC787277473D2135497FA6E1F9C54686BBE2153ADC026575D0DBEEB6F87365DFEA4801D7C7A2">macrofauna</a>. Because of this, it was a real worry that microorganisms
hitching a ride on Mars landers could invade the surface, outcompeting and
leading to the extinction of any putative microscopic Martians, and wiping out
our ability to ever know that life had ever existed on another planet.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This led to the Viking mission having the most intense
planetary protection effort and the production of the cleanest, most sterile
spacecraft, Viking 1 & 2, that have ever been launched. The expectation that
we would find habitable surface conditions and martian microbes also led to one
of the most interesting experiments ever carried out on another planet.<o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFTpMXRqZGksXi_YM4eq50tMNm5aI3vuKGJn-IKKsbEFbTV3ils5D4I9162Do3mic-TdDrv8V2kIiuF5GO4tGEOhzLW9FAap4oH4qfK4Wjftk15QElROMVATVDskiVTprxaTZcnX7rbr4/s580/Viking-with-Sagan-NASA-JPL-580x401.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="401" data-original-width="580" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFTpMXRqZGksXi_YM4eq50tMNm5aI3vuKGJn-IKKsbEFbTV3ils5D4I9162Do3mic-TdDrv8V2kIiuF5GO4tGEOhzLW9FAap4oH4qfK4Wjftk15QElROMVATVDskiVTprxaTZcnX7rbr4/w400-h276/Viking-with-Sagan-NASA-JPL-580x401.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Viking lander, Carl Sagan for scale (credit: NASA)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal">The Labelled Release Experiments carried by both Viking
landers were devised by Gilbert Leven and Patricia Straat. These experiments
involved scooping up a sample of martian surface soil, ‘feeding’ it a nutrient
broth labelled with radioactive isotopes and providing a little heat and water,
then measuring any radioactive gas produced as the broth was ‘eaten’ by
respiring martian microbes. On Mars, these experiments ‘worked perfectly’. When
‘fed’ the soil produced the radioactive gas exactly as would be expected if
martian microbes were present. If the soil was first heat sterilised to kill
any microbes present then less gas was produced as would be expected. The
designers of the experiment and many others saw this as a huge success and
clear evidence of life on Mars and published <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/JS082i028p04663" target="_blank">papers</a> to that effect.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first evidence that not all was as it seemed came
quickly. The Viking landers were also equipped with <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JS082i028p04641" target="_blank">instruments</a> to analyse the martian
soil to look for organic matter – which would be direct evidence of either the
microbes themselves or their normal food source. Despite multiple attempts, no
organic molecules were detected other than simple chlorinated molecules
accompanied by large releases of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. This was problematic,
a lack of organic matter in the soil meant no food for martian microbes to live
on (when they weren’t being fed by us). This meant that very soon, most
scientists preferred the hypothesis that the results of the Labelled Release
Experiment could be caused by some strongly oxidising mineral, present in the
martian soil, acting like a bleach to break down the nutrient broth, instead of
the presence of martian microbes. At best the results were ambiguous. Levin and
Straat disagreed, and have continued publishing support for their ‘life
detection’ up to the present (Patricia Straat died in October 2020).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The mystery of the strong oxidant persisted for 40 years
until the Phoenix lander detected <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009JE003424" target="_blank">perchlorate</a> in the martian soil. Perchlorates
and other oxychlorines have since been detected all over Mars by subsequent
missions. Perchlorates are strongly oxidising chlorine containing salts. It is
their presence that is believed to have caused the gas release measured in the
Labelled Release Experiment as they oxidised the organic carbon ‘food’ in the
nutrient broth on heating, mimicking biological activity. The presence of
perchlorates also explains the lack of detection of organic matter by Viking’s
thermal decomposition GCMS experiments. On heating in the sample oven, the
perchlorates break down, releasing large amounts of oxygen and chlorine. This
reacts with any organic matter present, causing it to combust and essentially
burn away. This neatly explains the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and the
simple chlorinated molecules which were detected by Viking 1 & 2 and, more
recently (since 2012), the <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jgre.20144" target="_blank">Curiosity Rover</a>.<o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9LOSO4xwIt44UJ9VI21q8FEY_c9-D4HwnUnJJ_ph5yB7DWRzraS2P3DWOzufRGxSkJLidG0iNdMzBST235qYi3LqkJWwYE0RVBzHYE_zrUfPZW8SwPLW4rgJIV8LCXoJgarz1wwfCWY/s708/1061_PIA01885_modest.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="708" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid9LOSO4xwIt44UJ9VI21q8FEY_c9-D4HwnUnJJ_ph5yB7DWRzraS2P3DWOzufRGxSkJLidG0iNdMzBST235qYi3LqkJWwYE0RVBzHYE_zrUfPZW8SwPLW4rgJIV8LCXoJgarz1wwfCWY/w400-h265/1061_PIA01885_modest.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Phoenix (credit: NASA)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal">So no, we haven’t yet detected evidence of life on Mars, the
results of the Labelled Release Experiment can be more simply explained
abiotically.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With everything we now know about the hostility of the
martian surface we really don’t expect to find anything living there. The deep subsurface,
sheltered from the harsh effects of UV radiation, solar and galactic rays, oxidising
chemicals, extreme temperature fluctuations and aridity, is another matter
entirely though. I would be very surprised if we never find evidence of at
least extinct life on Mars, and am hopeful we will one day find weird microbes
living deep beneath its surface.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Being the first step of eventual Mars Sample Return, planned
for completion sometime in the 2030’s, the successful landing of NASA’s Perseverance
rover yesterday will hopefully bring us one step closer to finally answering
the question of whether there was ever life on Mars.<o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyH-t2rIp-kVkhQQW8o5tcdQpYkQZq6Cb6Ss88zRqIpL_WRx8ljgBDBM8qMJaW81uaPp31tyi-pryyG2XUVAzrWcOEnDZ1ggVeMKV9dBIu4qflCAVX3nz9Kbe0ofCD73HsIlAEZC53wak/s320/25596_FLR_0000_0666952977_663ECM_T0010044AUT_04096_00_2I3J01-stretched.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyH-t2rIp-kVkhQQW8o5tcdQpYkQZq6Cb6Ss88zRqIpL_WRx8ljgBDBM8qMJaW81uaPp31tyi-pryyG2XUVAzrWcOEnDZ1ggVeMKV9dBIu4qflCAVX3nz9Kbe0ofCD73HsIlAEZC53wak/w400-h300/25596_FLR_0000_0666952977_663ECM_T0010044AUT_04096_00_2I3J01-stretched.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The first image sent back by Perseverance last night, minutes after landing (credit: NASA)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal">One final point for anyone who is not convinced about the
lack of some great NASA conspiracy covering up life on Mars, and which also
covers things like aliens visiting us, Oumuamua being an alien spaceship and
flat Earth battshittery: If you saw the live coverage of the landing last night,
or follow the Twitter accounts of the hundreds of NASA employees and thousands
of scientists actively involved in these missions, you’ll see just how excited
everyone gets and just how much they want to share EVERYTHING with the whole
world. You really think these people could keep come massive discovery like
that quiet? That’s just stupid...</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-13464650973219761502020-12-23T07:55:00.034-08:002020-12-23T08:06:26.257-08:00Paper Summary: Pyrolysis of carboxylic acids in the presence of iron oxides: Implications for life detection on missions to Mars<p>Normally I wouldn't even dream of doing any work 2 days before Christmas, but this year is a bit different. We're stuck in London's Tier 4 Festive Hell and Charlotte and I ran out of conversational topics half way through June, so I thought I'd share this tiny bit of good news at the end of a terrible
year, we’ve had another paper accepted! This one was initially submitted all
the way back at the end of 2018 before we’d even heard of social distancing or Barnard Castle. I
remember because it received its first rejection while I was at a real
in-person conference (who knows when they’ll be back) in Scotland (we’re never allowed
back there are we?).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The new paper is the snappily titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pyrolysis of carboxylic acids in the presence of iron oxides:
Implications for life detection on missions to Mars</i>. It is the second in a series
of papers we’re hoping to get out looking at how the presence of iron
containing minerals may have affected attempts to detect organic matter,
including life detection efforts, on Mars. You can read an open access version <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347591938_Pyrolysis_of_carboxylic_acids_in_the_presence_of_iron_oxides_Implications_for_life_detection_on_missions_to_Mars" target="_blank">here</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’ve discussed what organic matter is and why efforts to
find life on Mars revolve around its detection on here before. But briefly,
organic matter is made up of organic molecules, these are chemical compounds
that contain carbon (C) and hydrogen (H). The C-H backbone is very flexible and
reactive but also manages to be quite stable. This allows many different elements
and functional groups to join on, in various positions and shapes, to form a very
wide range of carbon-based molecules, some of which may be quite large and
complex. Organic molecules can form through just the action
of heat or radiation on inorganic carbon-bearing species (like carbon dioxide),
even in the depths of space. But the unique properties of organic molecules allows carbon-based chemistry to form the building blocks of all known life; as
biology takes simple organic molecules and uses them to build complex biomolecules. Many non-biological processes can synthesize surprisingly
complex organic molecules, however, certain structures and patterns are almost
statistically impossibly to be formed by random chemical interactions, they may
only be produced by the dedicated, enzyme controlled processes of life. If preserved in sediments, these biological structures
are known as organic biomarkers and, as pretty solid evidence for life, their
detection would be the ‘smoking gun’ of Mars life detection efforts. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We may expect to find biomarkers on Mars as around 3 to 4
billion years ago, around the same time life was evolving on Earth, Mars was a
much more pleasant place to be. It was warmer and wetter as it still had an
atmosphere, replenished by volcanic activity and protected by a stronger
magnetic field. There were rivers, lakes and even oceans. All of the ingredients
for life to evolve were present for millions, if not hundreds of millions, of
years. If life did evolve it would leave its molecular fossils, biomarkers, in the
sediments for us to detect today. Even if life didn’t evolve, there should
still be evidence of interesting prebiotic chemistry occurring due to
hydrothermal or magmatic processes (as we do see evidence of this in <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2019/03/scientists-blew-up-piece-of-mars-youll.html" target="_blank">martian meteorites</a>).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Landed Mars missions have yet to find any definitive biomarkers,
although they have detected a suite of small, simple organic molecules that
appear to be the fragmentation products of larger <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1068.full" target="_blank">molecules </a>(a macromolecule),
and some longer chain alkanes which have been suggested to be the breakdown
products of fatty acids. All attempts to find organic molecules on Mars so far
have used methods that rely on heating up samples to break down and volatilise organic
matter into smaller fragments that can be separated, detected and identified.
The problem is that that also heats up any inorganic minerals that are also
present, and make up the bulk of, the sample. Some of these minerals may be highly oxidised and
release oxygen on heating, essentially burning up any organic matter that is
also present in the sample. In the best case scenario this organic matter becomes overly fragmented and loses structural information diagnostic of its source, in the worst case it is totally lost
to analysis as it oxidises to carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. This is what
has been blamed for the lack of conclusive detections so far as we know that
some salts (particularly <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/07/latest-catchy-titled-paper-summary.html" target="_blank">perchlorates</a>) have had this effect.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another factor that has so far been less explored is the effect of
other, 'less reactive', inorganic minerals in the samples. Iron oxides are
widespread across the surface of Mars, they’re the reason it is the Red Planet after all.
Therefore, we wanted to look at the effects iron oxides could be having on
attempts to find and identify biomarkers in the martian sediments. We had
already had some clues that iron oxides may affect biomarker detection from
Jonny’s <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2020/10/paper-summary-artificial-maturation-of.html" target="_blank">work </a>that was published a few months ago. This showed that in natural
samples that were rich in both iron and organic matter, you had to remove the
iron-bearing minerals to be able to properly detect the organic molecules and fully identify the source of organic matter.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZr7fMPj8Y8xROS8C_rR3-BXxtvF-_hRrVaUz7FGqXLWWvfCYG5FGsSNrEHEyVg1eK57GdzbKmaNcP3yA-IQpeSN_5rXtnfYFdTkrOZZXlQLrVcw2CMKlqTxSLH7OI329y7-KHqBddWTU/s1420/Picture2.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="1420" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZr7fMPj8Y8xROS8C_rR3-BXxtvF-_hRrVaUz7FGqXLWWvfCYG5FGsSNrEHEyVg1eK57GdzbKmaNcP3yA-IQpeSN_5rXtnfYFdTkrOZZXlQLrVcw2CMKlqTxSLH7OI329y7-KHqBddWTU/w640-h182/Picture2.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mars is the Red Planet due to iron oxides at the surface (credit: NASA)</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">To work out exactly what was going on we needed a MUCH
simpler system than Jonny’s stream environment, so we made our own analogue
samples to eliminate unknown variables.</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We decided to use 2 mid-long chain length fatty (carboxylic)
acids, both containing 18 carbon atoms but in different saturation states. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oleic acid, an unsaturated fatty acid that is
a major component of vegetable oils, and stearic acid, a saturated fatty acid
that is found in many animal and vegetable fats. In this context unsaturated
and saturated mean whether the molecule contains any double carbon-carbon bonds
or not, which is the same meaning as when you talk about fats in food. Fatty
acids are useful molecules to look at as their chain length and saturation
state can provide a lot of information about their probable source: biological processes
select for longer chain lengths whereas non-biological processes are
statistically more likely to produce shorter chain lengths and unsaturated
molecules saturate over time, so a concentration of longer, unsaturated fatty
acids may be a good indicator of recent life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqvfb_qHT1yeqf7Um-FU5U460q0-CuiA8ujmIgXwefF07klQVVFw0huG7UR6WrPXlAWuKr1B79nfVeXpd_Ta3eHAdofNd34sel_RFvJ7JJyTWmlyjqfFMvAmiUNy0iYonsFw1ZdRqY9Yw/s1460/Picture3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="1460" height="70" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqvfb_qHT1yeqf7Um-FU5U460q0-CuiA8ujmIgXwefF07klQVVFw0huG7UR6WrPXlAWuKr1B79nfVeXpd_Ta3eHAdofNd34sel_RFvJ7JJyTWmlyjqfFMvAmiUNy0iYonsFw1ZdRqY9Yw/w400-h70/Picture3.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steric acid (left) and Oleic acid (right)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div>We mixed these fatty acids into a variety of inorganic
minerals, we used quartz as a ‘control’ sample, as this mineral is known to not
be very reactive, and tested the iron oxides haematite and magnetite; the iron
oxyhydroxide goethite and the iron hydroxide ferrihydrite. All of these
minerals have been directly detected or inferred to be present at the surface
of Mars.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We then analysed these fatty acid-mineral mixtures in a way
similar to that which is used to analyse samples at Mars; by heating them up in
an inert atmosphere and seeing what organic molecules were released, a
technique called pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What we observed was that on heating the organic matter and
iron-bearing minerals reacted with each other. This altered the organic
products detected as the breakdown of the fatty acids was enhanced and the
products were transformed into other species, far less diagnostic of their
source. This led to a reduction in both the abundance and variety of products
detected, especially when lower (more realistic) concentrations of fatty acids
were used. A serious loss of diagnostic structural information meant that
the products of these fatty acids, which could have been indicative of life, were
pretty much indistinguishable to the expected breakdown products of abiotic, mature
macromolecular matter. Abiotic macromolecular organic matter is what has
already been inferred to have been detected at the surface of Mars and is the sort
of thing we would expect to detect there as it could be delivered by meteorites
(they’re full of the stuff). <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAUKPHQrQQupzT8qx0Eh1wOV-FbaTBXxtqvaUGXGBix0v5Zph9RN6i7t9LAqBGzQ0ukL6L3zbVaSy9A_Zxf_60pccgPu2JKMeC4UBDLH5XwJvfhlHDrtMA-uWraPQWBNceshBroiNcrMk/s1144/Picture4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="459" data-original-width="1144" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAUKPHQrQQupzT8qx0Eh1wOV-FbaTBXxtqvaUGXGBix0v5Zph9RN6i7t9LAqBGzQ0ukL6L3zbVaSy9A_Zxf_60pccgPu2JKMeC4UBDLH5XwJvfhlHDrtMA-uWraPQWBNceshBroiNcrMk/w400-h160/Picture4.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Iron oxides promote the fragmentation & transformation of fatty acids into molecules more normally indicative of abiotic macromolecular matter<br /> </td></tr></tbody></table>The inability to distinguish between low concentrations of ‘fresh’
biologically derived molecules and ancient abiological matter in the presence
of iron minerals is a serious problem for life detection efforts at Mars,
however our work did suggest a potential solution. Quartz had very little
effect on the breakdown of the fatty acids, however, quartz-rich sediments are not
a good environment for preserving organic matter over geological time as they
are actually not reactive enough, iron-bearing minerals are much better because
the organic matter binds to its surface, providing some protection. Out of all
the iron-bearing minerals we tested the ‘least bad’ was haematite, this means
that, on Mars, we should be looking for organic matter in sediments that have
been subjected to conditions where haematite is the most stable form of iron. Haematite
is the most stable iron-bearing phase under oxidising and acidic conditions,
especially at higher temperatures, and there are numerous localities on Mars
where we have evidence (from mineral veins) that hydrothermal fluids fitting this
description flowed through the rocks while they were buried. At these
localities, any of the more reactive iron-bearing phases will have already been
replaced by haematite, which based on some of the experiments Jonny did for his
PhD thesis, shouldn’t negatively affect the preservation of any organic matter
adsorbed onto those minerals.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRnX0Aq2XpMDmXdUrxRKWX3nONPitYlOy-h9Q8hTE1zj1mA9f9GLSv3Rq5KMXIGsb1AF7DPzwZ8trQpQo0teld0oFoxMTzlAEQwK7G-O-TpDnFhyphenhyphenxnz6ke4Xaf9G_xzdVlXVhdZ_J4LlI/s1041/veins.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="1041" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRnX0Aq2XpMDmXdUrxRKWX3nONPitYlOy-h9Q8hTE1zj1mA9f9GLSv3Rq5KMXIGsb1AF7DPzwZ8trQpQo0teld0oFoxMTzlAEQwK7G-O-TpDnFhyphenhyphenxnz6ke4Xaf9G_xzdVlXVhdZ_J4LlI/w400-h189/veins.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Veins provide evidence of hydrothermal fluid flow </td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br />So, in conclusion, iron oxides are going to be problematic
for the detection and identification of fatty acids on Mars. However, as they
are good for preservation of organic matter over geological time periods we can’t
just avoid them. Instead we have to target localities where haematite is the
most stable iron oxide as this seems to be the ‘least bad’.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am currently in the process of submitting a follow-up
paper examining what effect these iron-bearing minerals have on the detection
of biomarkers from whole bacteria and we’re also looking at a few other Mars-relevant
sources of organic matter. Watch this space but they seem to cause very similar
problems for detecting those as well…<o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisY7xuNP0ZTMzbjVdPv3u1XlgdGVESrlLcMbuKglimiKb8A-ixRRtwJbMgPF7WDdfMm_gBDyDuvT7nu_NRjOWOhNY2CVhmmFk3I5JDX0doHaNKAIm6sTWOnnQrr1ZEIRpBoBy7z-3BW7U/s995/Picture5.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="995" data-original-width="847" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisY7xuNP0ZTMzbjVdPv3u1XlgdGVESrlLcMbuKglimiKb8A-ixRRtwJbMgPF7WDdfMm_gBDyDuvT7nu_NRjOWOhNY2CVhmmFk3I5JDX0doHaNKAIm6sTWOnnQrr1ZEIRpBoBy7z-3BW7U/w340-h400/Picture5.png" width="340" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Merry Christmas!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br />Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-63328938684291719082020-10-01T03:25:00.001-07:002020-10-01T03:25:27.330-07:00Paper Summary: Artificial maturation of iron- and sulfur-rich Mars analogues (AKA Is There Life in Dorset?)<b>Artificial maturation of iron- and sulfur-rich Mars analogues: Implications for the diagenetic stability of biopolymers and their detection with pyrolysis gas chromatography–mass spectrometry</b> (Tan, Royle and Sephton, Astrobiology, 2020) <div><br /></div><div>AKA<b> Is There Life <strike>On Mars</strike> In Dorset? </b></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggybHEwBEchcSphMmAnTb4ITxkwuqWxM3xmnqEv4esRvN_nDv8tm19DvLfmBmzSXOm4INdOrkmXMmC-FIQLIfQeaow4Qe_zDOFpXPZGaLEX3UE7ZGTi1htamMcaVxAdsAY-fDEuvd-xmQ/s2009/Picture1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="753" data-original-width="2009" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggybHEwBEchcSphMmAnTb4ITxkwuqWxM3xmnqEv4esRvN_nDv8tm19DvLfmBmzSXOm4INdOrkmXMmC-FIQLIfQeaow4Qe_zDOFpXPZGaLEX3UE7ZGTi1htamMcaVxAdsAY-fDEuvd-xmQ/w640-h240/Picture1.png" width="640" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Gale Crater, Ancient Mars/ St Oswolds Bay, Dorset; the similarities are remarkable.... </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>So despite the global pandemic shutting down the lab and having to spend weeks in a Singaporean quarantine centre with coronavirus himself, Jonny has managed to get the lab’s only 2020 paper accepted. It’ll be a few weeks until the final version is online but an open access pre-proofed version of the accepted manuscript can be found here (<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344428851_Artificial_maturation_of_iron-and_sulfur-rich_Mars_analogues_Implications_for_the_diagenetic_stability_of_biopolymers_and_their_2_detection_with_pyrolysis_gas_chromatography-mass_spectrometry">link</a>). As it’s a quite a long paper and we’re all busy trying to survive the end times, we’ve tried to write a accessible summary here to get the main points across…. </div><div><br /></div><div>Around 4-3.5 billion years ago (the Late Noachian to Hesperian periods) the surface of Mars was a much more habitable place than it is today. Increased volcanic activity and a protective active magnetic field maintained Mar's atmosphere. This provided a global warming effect, allowing liquid water to be stable on the martian surface (at least some of the time). Rivers flowed, valleys were formed, and lakes were filled. This is around the same time that life evolved on Earth, and if it also evolved on Mars, or hitched a ride there from Earth via meteorite, it may well have flourished under these conditions. Therefore, our best chance to find evidence of ancient martian life will be in the sediments deposited in this period. </div><div><br /></div><div>As well as providing an atmosphere, those volcanoes injected large volumes of sulphur dioxide (SO2) into the atmosphere and made the waters quite acidic. This encouraged the deposition of sedimentary sulphate minerals and iron oxides. On Earth, acidic groundwaters containing dissolved sulphates bubble up in a few places to produce sulphur streams and precipitate sulphate salts, such as jarosite, alongside iron oxides, such as haematite and goethite. These streams provide handy analogues for ancient habitable martian environments, especially as some can be found as nearby as Dorset! </div><div><br /></div><div>In a previous paper (<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25752-7?sf191374231=1">link</a>), Jonny already established that organic biosignature molecules (the ‘fingerprints’ of life) are concentrated within the iron-rich phases of the sulphur stream environment and that they may be detected by techniques similar to the capabilities of current and future Mars Rover missions. </div><div><br /></div><div>The new work takes this a step further, to see what would be detectable after the nearly 4 billion years that have passed since this most habitable period of Mars. During that time the sediments will have been buried, heated and subsequently uncovered; any sediments that have not been buried on Mars will have had all their interesting organic molecules destroyed by cosmic and solar radiation so there's no point looking in those. We know that the sediments at Gale Crater that <i>Curiosity</i> has been poking at were at one point buried to at least 1.2 km depth. Increased pressure and temperature, when coupled with potentially reactive mineral surfaces, may destroy or at least alter, the evidence of life (organic biosignature molecules) we are searching for. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sediment samples were collected from 2 sulphur streams in Dorset, at St. Oswald’s Bay and Stair Hole. These sites are known to be inhabited by weird extremophile microbial life, including acidophilic (acid loving) algae and microbial mats of phototrophic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_sulfur_bacteria">purple sulphur bacteria</a> (they use sunlight to make energy out of sulphur), which thrive in these harsh conditions. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1glYXLTNwskPpQO2tQWd_mMyz1klW5uY1gOnvxihOu1uYpCiP_bOWtApiMLha_rtJf_CMS-8bxV69tEbqTVmajzOk3kxvMfcHbUmxSePQuvm4i7-zitfwGe5yU6CQAAIsmDpzZs3V134/s698/sulphur+stream.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="698" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1glYXLTNwskPpQO2tQWd_mMyz1klW5uY1gOnvxihOu1uYpCiP_bOWtApiMLha_rtJf_CMS-8bxV69tEbqTVmajzOk3kxvMfcHbUmxSePQuvm4i7-zitfwGe5yU6CQAAIsmDpzZs3V134/w640-h480/sulphur+stream.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The sulphur stream, green acidophillic algae and purple sulphur bacteria are easy to spot so should be easy to detect their 'biosignatures'</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>After being freeze-dried, these samples were artificially matured using hydrous pyrolysis. In this technique millions to billions of years of burial and low temperature heating can be replicated within a few days by using higher temperatures to speed up the reactions (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation">Arrhenius equation</a>). After this any surviving soluble organic matter was extracted with solvents, as in reality this would be lost due to the actions of percolating fluids through the sediment, so we only want to look at the insoluble fraction left behind. To see what effects the sulphates and iron oxides in the sediments had on the detectability of the organic material during the analysis step these were removed using strong acid and alkali washes to dissolve them away for half the samples.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1lltoNIoqPoEiL4V39TkOHpmUCIV0EUZMOLGoJZhyphenhyphen_nIuUIyWjbn4UnwJiObJ010Jeklfo7l_CduSIXC_lIi5-1d65RTVjM9YfdfTEsWC-wmss8ukIDkOaTM22K_8E-r3NvOXarWtcNw/s2048/bombs.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1lltoNIoqPoEiL4V39TkOHpmUCIV0EUZMOLGoJZhyphenhyphen_nIuUIyWjbn4UnwJiObJ010Jeklfo7l_CduSIXC_lIi5-1d65RTVjM9YfdfTEsWC-wmss8ukIDkOaTM22K_8E-r3NvOXarWtcNw/w480-h640/bombs.png" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i> 'Bomblets' and pressure vessel 'bomb' used for hydrous pyrolysis, billions of years of burial in one weekend!</i></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>After all this preparation, the samples were analysed by pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS). This technique is similar to the main way that all Mars missions have looked for organic matter in martian sediments/rocks. By heating up the sample organic matter is liberate and volatilised into fragments that can be separated and identified (more details <a href="https://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/07/latest-catchy-titled-paper-summary.html?showComment=1591480707699">here</a>). This technique, whilst being the simplest way of detecting insoluble macromolecular material (of the type we may expect to be left behind after billions of years of burial) the heating encourages reactions between the organic matter and reactive/oxidising mineral surfaces, which has been a problem in the past (hopefully we’ll have a paper looking at this in more detail out very soon); hence the acid/alkali treatment to remove these phases in this study. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unsurprisingly, the sulphur stream samples that had not been artificially matured were found to produce a wide range of organic compounds, consistent from those generated from the pyrolysis of microbial mats from similar environments. The shear amount of organic matter in the sample was able to overcome any issues in detection due to the presence of the sulphates and iron oxides in the samples. However, samples that received the acid/alkali wash still produced a greater abundance and variety of organic molecules than those which did not. Many of the organic compounds detected are diagnostic of biology and have the potential to be used as biosignatures. Some can be related to bacteria, with markers of both anaerobic and aerobic metabolisms present, while others indicate an input of woody higher plant material. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjdtiqFHpsiYP0ajfdPpjdgjqOE2lWigtBajRH0lddNa_4RP_Wt_dgmSgbBEBZambDB5hKRguLJU8JRBjPFG5UppapbG5-JWRzkoYNqmmHPr8PNyl3Oa9aU-I3LhE8zfUbpUKgpxJ2XIY/s1280/diagenesis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjdtiqFHpsiYP0ajfdPpjdgjqOE2lWigtBajRH0lddNa_4RP_Wt_dgmSgbBEBZambDB5hKRguLJU8JRBjPFG5UppapbG5-JWRzkoYNqmmHPr8PNyl3Oa9aU-I3LhE8zfUbpUKgpxJ2XIY/w640-h360/diagenesis.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Pyrolysis-GCMS data showing what organic molecules may be detected from the same sulphur stream sample with different pre-treatment regimes, before and after hydrous pyrolysis and before and after acid treatment </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>After artificial maturation/diagenesis, organic matter detectability decreased markedly with increased hydrous pyrolysis temperature as organic matter was degraded. It was not until the sulphates and iron oxides were dissolved away that we could see anything interesting, i.e. nothing diagnostic of life was detected without the acid/alkali treatment! After they were removed it could be observed that many biosignature compounds did, in fact, survive the maturation process, although some were lost or altered.</div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div>So, why’s this interesting at all? Well it demonstrates that if we only use bog standard thermal decomposition (pyrolysis) techniques to look for organic matter in martian sediments which are rich in sulphates and iron oxides then we’re going to miss out on a lot of stuff, we just won’t see biosignatures that are there! Sulphates and iron oxides are yet another barrier to organic matter detection by thermal extraction strategies and should be avoided where possible.
Issues with this may have already happened, the simple organic compounds detected by Curiosity in 2018 (<a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1096.abstract">link</a>) look rather similar to what was detected in the un-acid/alkali washed samples and were detected in mudstones with high sulphate and iron oxide contents! If these reactive minerals could have been removed in a pre-treatment step prior to analysis, who knows how much of a greater variety of organic information would have been unlocked, perhaps even the first compelling biosignatures of ancient life on Mars? <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk4kCd2py1a4Ih2tgreGQj7k_hVwIj9kTejxa2XQpW9MDqjl7uh80uUbjw-RrFGxu_qmTtM7P6fkiXoUVE1RQrk17mqgyqm1SDgwkGivApyEY2gCiJ_FnMLwZlwup5uK_Frq3gFmAv9Wg/s1280/fig+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk4kCd2py1a4Ih2tgreGQj7k_hVwIj9kTejxa2XQpW9MDqjl7uh80uUbjw-RrFGxu_qmTtM7P6fkiXoUVE1RQrk17mqgyqm1SDgwkGivApyEY2gCiJ_FnMLwZlwup5uK_Frq3gFmAv9Wg/w640-h360/fig+3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Simple organic compounds already detected on Mars, but what information was lost due to reactive minerals?</i></div>Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-87586040880016907182020-09-23T06:56:00.006-07:002020-09-23T06:56:58.630-07:00Sorry Venus, Mars is still where it's at!<p> All of the excitement in the astrobiological community of
late has been on the detection of <a href="https://twitter.com/i/status/1305607132067385346" target="_blank">phosphine</a> in the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-1174-4" target="_blank">clouds of Venus</a> and how this
may be a ‘biosignature’ of microbial life in the ‘habitable’ environment of the
Venereal (pretty sure that’s the correct <a href="https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/phosphine" target="_blank">term</a>…) clouds. While this detection is
pretty damn cool, I do think the detection of a simple molecule that can also
be produced from volcanoes and lightning (which we know exist on Venus) or from
some other weird high temperature geochemistry (we know sod-all about Venus
really) is getting a little over-hyped (<a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/06/scientifically-accurate-non-clickbait.html" target="_blank">in the same vein as Curiosity’s 2018 ‘life’detection</a>). </p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSx2IUBMCuNlcVQT5T7cuew12pTYqVdVur5Naxz9eun1ySsU31_0Qh82PI60ZswG-Rc14MFIYY4eOjIDUAks6eheMcTI5yXH81Vv7HGucedil33f2rXwpD2kbSMI3W8EHeIJICBcpIGmU/s622/venus.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="622" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSx2IUBMCuNlcVQT5T7cuew12pTYqVdVur5Naxz9eun1ySsU31_0Qh82PI60ZswG-Rc14MFIYY4eOjIDUAks6eheMcTI5yXH81Vv7HGucedil33f2rXwpD2kbSMI3W8EHeIJICBcpIGmU/s320/venus.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can always rely on the <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1336166/life-on-venus-microbes-phosphine-gas-atmosphere-russia-venera13-probe-moving-surface-spt" target="_blank">Daily Express...</a></td></tr></tbody></table></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Now what is worth getting excited about is the <i>Curiosity</i> rover
finally carrying out a TMAH experiment <a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/8753/sols-2880-2882-msls-sam-tmah-a-okay/" target="_blank">this month</a> (after nearly 8 Earth years
on the martian surface). For non-organic geochemists; TMAH, or
tetramethylammonium hydroxide, is one of the two derivatisation agents carried by
SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars, Curiosity’s onboard chemistry laboratory), the
other being the even more god-awfully named MTBSTFA or
N-methyl-N-(tert-butlydimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks to previous experiments by <i>Curiosity</i>, we now know
that organic molecules are certainly <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1068.full" target="_blank">present on Mars</a>, they may exist as complex
macromolecules, and their detectability is affected by the presence of various
minerals on the martian surface. The usual technique for detecting organic
matter on Mars, thermal decomposition (pyrolysis), is a bit of a blunt
instrument, as using heat to release organic molecules from the sediments
basically blows them apart (especially in the presence of oxidising salts),
destroying structural information and making it difficult to establish their
provenance. Because of this, so far, we have only detected simple organic
molecules on Mars with much speculation, but little evidence, to their source
(reminder – organic molecules, whilst they are the building blocks of life,
they can also be produced by many abiotic processes). In contrast, derivatization
agents are a really useful tool in detecting and understanding organic
molecules as they can liberate organic molecules of interest from
macromolecular matter or (potentially reactive) mineral surfaces less destructively and at
lower temperatures.</p><p class="MsoNormal">A particularly interesting class of molecules in the search
for life on Mars are the fatty acids. Unlike most other (potential)
biomolecules fatty acids survive well under harsh environmental conditions over
geological timescales (pretty important as Mars’s most habitable conditions
were over 3.5 billion years ago) and can contain much information suggestive of
their source. Fatty acids, as the name suggests are the main breakdown products
of lipids or fats. Abiotic processes (such as hydrothermal processes) primarily
produce short fatty acid molecules, whereas life tends to use longer fatty acid
chains with even carbon numbers as essential components of cell membranes. The
specific lengths and saturation states of these longer fatty acids can also
provide clues as to the type of life they came from, bacteria, algae, higher
plants all leave behind specific distribution patterns of fatty acid chain
lengths. Hopefully I'll be posting a more in-depth discussion of why fatty acids are a good target in the search for martian life shortly as we're trying to get a couple of papers published on the subject...</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVme7XX-fPtUWb_ZuunBkE8QFzVcRTHsZoeumW_wCm6eHVVfir3EJCsMUNHVjvATS4lC9IZNrOjpNEtCrKbgbz_swAo_7Aoopks1uiOTkgk9_kynbJTqSBM8gnrfEZo306HazYgnC4sfM/s1142/oleic.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1142" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVme7XX-fPtUWb_ZuunBkE8QFzVcRTHsZoeumW_wCm6eHVVfir3EJCsMUNHVjvATS4lC9IZNrOjpNEtCrKbgbz_swAo_7Aoopks1uiOTkgk9_kynbJTqSBM8gnrfEZo306HazYgnC4sfM/w400-h203/oleic.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oleic acid, an 18 carbon singularly unsaturated fatty acid<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal">However, these potential biosignatures are notoriously tricky
to detect as fatty acids (a) are ‘sticky’ and so are hard to get off mineral
surfaces in the first place; (b) on heating they break down pretty easily to ‘boring’
alkenes/alkanes which don’t preserve much information about their source; and
(c) even if you liberate them from the mineral surface intact they are a polar
molecule so the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer’s (GCMS) detectors only ‘see’
them if present in large quantities (unlikely on Mars).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If a TMAH derivatisation step is applied to the samples
before pyrolysis, however, the fatty acids can be liberated from the
macromolecules/mineral phases at a lower temperature. Heating in the presence
of TMAH hydrolyses organic matter, freeing the fatty acids (and other bound
molecules) and also methylates (adds a methyl -CH<sub>3</sub>) to polar
functional groups, including the carboxylic group of the fatty acid molecule.
The methylation makes the fatty acid (or other polar molecules) less polar and
more volatile, making them more amenable to detection in the GCMS. Here's an <a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/suppl/doi/10.1089/ast.2018.1819#:~:text=TMAH%20can%20liberate%20fatty%20acids,GC%2DMS)%20by%20methylation." target="_blank">open access paper</a> on this technique being used on Mars analog samples if you want (significantly) more detail.<o:p></o:p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgONy1Tt8RYk62vcjil-kLQpiHcBCz-QbXuKDL6XsNfVAUsKMmik9PVc9dC6T5qUqUDbh30NAwdsmNpFV6vWEPyX5-UjEhudM9o6Y2Ti5KI7KJmCXS_y54eaqgF1TlL-inWKaCr0H63ozw/s820/FAME.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="820" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgONy1Tt8RYk62vcjil-kLQpiHcBCz-QbXuKDL6XsNfVAUsKMmik9PVc9dC6T5qUqUDbh30NAwdsmNpFV6vWEPyX5-UjEhudM9o6Y2Ti5KI7KJmCXS_y54eaqgF1TlL-inWKaCr0H63ozw/s320/FAME.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The easier to detect methyl ester of oleic acid<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal">This is exciting as this experiment will be our best chance so far of
detecting more complex organic molecules, work out where they are from and
ultimately find evidence of life on Mars (maybe). Unfortunately we'll have to wait months to find out the results as the scientists involved will have to carry out all sorts of experiments to validate the rover's findings (especially if they find something that looks particularly interesting).</p><p class="MsoNormal">Further into the future, the ExoMars <i>Rosalind Franklin</i>
rover, scheduled for launch in 2022, will have the ability to carry out other derivatisation pyrolysis experiments which work at temperatures down to 250 or 140 depending
on the exact technique used. It will also have a laser desorption unit which
will liberate organic molecules through millisecond laser pulses, a non-destructive
technique. Both of these abilities should preserve more structural information
and be less likely to suffer mineral surface effects than any experiments we
have been able to do on Mars with <i>Curiosity</i> or any of the previous landed
missions. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-54663967852640159132019-06-21T08:30:00.001-07:002019-06-21T08:30:36.345-07:00The Nemesis Project<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve repeatedly heard that every academic, at some stage in their
career, has that one project that just won’t behave itself and become a nice
little publishable package. Experimental results lead to more questions than
answers. Reviewers say the ides are interesting but are unconvinced by the
conclusions or have issues in the reliability of the method. You're rejected but
encouraged to re-submit. The whole thing drags on for years, quietly ticking
away in the background, while research avenues with more promise for short-term
gain are chased instead. But the nemesis project never dies, it stays there at
the back of your head. Too much time and effort has already been invested, you’re
in too deep to give up on it now. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My own mini-version of this has just ended. My nemesis project
has just been published in Astrobiology (<a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2018.1968">link</a>, and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332910213_Solid_Phase_Micro_Extraction_Potential_for_Organic_Contamination_Control_for_Planetary_Protection_of_Life_Detection_Missions_to_the_Icy_Moons_of_the_Outer_Solar_System">link</a> to non-paywalled
pre-print) 3 years after my supervisor scribbled down a ‘cool idea which won’t
take much time to test’ (I may be paraphrasing there, it was a long time ago).
This is not my usual post-publication summary of my work, I will hopefully
write that soon, instead this is a story of how much behind the scenes failure
can have gone into one, small, relatively insignificant, successfully published
paper.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The idea for the project came out of the<a href="http://pposs.org/"> PlanetaryProtection of the Outer Solar System project, </a>which I have written about before
(<a href="https://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2016/12/planetary-protection-of-outer-solar.html">link</a>). In one of the early meetings back in 2016 my supervisor, clearly paying
full attention to whatever was being discussed at the time, scribbled a vague
experimental idea onto a scrap of paper. This idea was to see if we could use a
well-established environmental sampling technique (solid phase micro extraction,
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-phase_microextraction">SPME</a>) to test spacecraft hardware surfaces for organic contamination. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now this was interesting as organic contamination
is a big issue in planetary protection, we don’t want to send dirty spacecraft
with highly sensitive instruments to the (currently) pristine icy moons of the
outer solar system. We’d end up only detecting muck from Earth and so either getting
all excited over nothing, misinterpreting it for evidence of alien life, or, a
real interesting extra-terrestrial signal would be missed, lost in background
noise from the contaminants. Current methods employed for detecting contaminants
on surfaces tend to be time consuming, complicated and may involve multiple
solvents being used in the process – themselves potential contaminants.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The premise was therefore simple: Get some stainless steel
to use as a budget stand in for a spacecraft surface, contaminate it, see if
SPME (coupled with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chromatography%E2%80%93mass_spectrometry">GC-MS</a>) is sensitive enough to detect contaminants at the levels
of cleanliness required for life-detection missions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first version of this study just involved leaving some
stainless steel L-shaped brackets (bought from a hardware store) out in the lab
to collect fallout contamination from the air and also handling them with and
without gloves to see if they picked up anything detectable from hand transfer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To be scientifically valid a study like this must be reproducible,
so many repetitions of everything being tested are needed, simple, but
monotonous, time consuming work – perfect for an undergraduate summer
internship! Georgios, a 2<sup>nd</sup> year undergraduate and now co-author on
the final paper, gave up 6 weeks of his summer in 2017 to do this, creating
loads of data for me to work up afterwards. Now initially we thought this first
version of the study was pretty good, however the reviewers had other thoughts.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Reject but encourage re-submission.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The issues basically boiled down to our method being a bit
woolly and bullsh#t (again, paraphrasing). How could we know what was on the
surface to detect and therefore how sensitive the method was if we hadn’t
specifically contaminated it ourselves at a known concentration? We’d basically
skipped the proof of concept stage and gone straight to real-word
testing (well as real as you can get without a real spacecraft)...So yeah, fair enough.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not having scope to dedicate 6 weeks of lab time to
completely redo the experimental side of this study myself, the project had to
get shelved until the following summer (2018) when I could get a second student,
Yuting, who was keen to get some experience in the mind-numbing, soul
destroying boredom of repetitive lab work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the meantime, I took the reviewer comments, which despite
being rather critical were all very valid and helpful, and developed a whole
new method for testing the sensitivity of this technique. This was to be much
more scientific, creating a whole range of solutions of astrobiologically-relevant
contaminants to contaminate a surface with much better-defined properties (although
it was still basically just a steel nut). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once again, the student project seemed a success. Yuting
produced a shed load of nice replicate data over the summer, which I turned
into a completely new manuscript. None of the data set from Georgios’s original
experimental run even made it into the new work, and after a few weeks of
tidying up and writing we re-submitted. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Again, however, the reviewers didn’t quite agree, while they
did think the method was now (mostly) sound, they didn’t agree the results were
as promising as we did and wanted more and better data. Almost annoyingly this
wasn’t a rejection this time, there was now a time pressure involved with a
re-submission deadline. I could have ignored it and waited another year, but
there was an end in sight, a way to kill this thing. Jon just needed to work
some magic to tweak the mass spec settings to decrease the noise and make the
data more convincing. Unfortunately, this meant I now had to repeat all the experimental
work with the new settings myself, replicating a whole summer student project
in about 3 weeks. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was not fun, but it worked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now at the end of it all, it is clear that without the
multiple knock backs and the intermediary time periods to just think about how
to improve the methodology, this study would’ve been pretty rubbish. This is definitely
a case where the review process has greatly improved an original idea and has shown me that rejections don’t always have to be a bad thing, they can be an opportunity.
However, this only took 3 years to take down, I’m not sure how I’d feel if this
had grown into some 5 or 10 year, or even career-spanning, monster.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe that’ll be the next quick project…<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-30155410216076302372019-05-08T04:07:00.000-07:002019-05-08T04:18:00.117-07:00Washing samples to detect 'Martian' organic matter<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The beginning of this year seemed to be a good time for our group
getting papers accepted and the third of those that snuck in is now online in
Astrobiology:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2018.1888">Effects of Oxygen-Containing Salts on the Detection
of Organic Biomarkers on Mars and in Terrestrial Analogue Soils. Wren
Montgomery,Elizabeth A. Jaramillo, Samuel H. Royle, Samuel P. Kounaves,
DirkSchulze-Makuch and Mark A. Sephton. (2019) Astrobiology</a></span></u><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once again, we’ve been looking at the troublesome effects of perchlorates
on the detection of organic molecules, only this time we’ve used the Atacama
Desert as a stand-in for Mars.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">I’ve discussed the ‘</span><u><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/07/latest-catchy-titled-paper-summary.html">perchlorate problem</a></span></u><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">’ on Mars numerous
times on this blog as it’s what I’ve been working on for the last couple of
years (although not any more, watch this space). In short, oxygen-rich salts
(of which perchlorate is probably the most problematic) are present in the
Martian soil, we also expect there to be organic matter present (note, organic
does not necessarily mean biological, see </span><u><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/06/scientifically-accurate-non-clickbait.html">previous rant</a></span></u><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">). With Mars lander missions, such as
Curiosity, we attempt to detect the organic matter in the soil by heating the
samples up in an oven to break down large molecules into smaller (more
volatile) fragments that we can detect. However, those salts also break down
when heated, releasing oxygen. This oxygen causes the organic matter to combust
and any interesting organic molecules ‘burn up’ and are lost as carbon dioxide
and carbon monoxide gases. This explains the difficulty that Mars missions have
had in detecting organic matter on the surface, there has only been a single
successful detection, which I’ll come back to later.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Mars today is a hyper-arid environment. While there may have been
flowing rivers, lakes and even seas on the surface in the past, nowadays any
liquid water anywhere near the surface is very rare. This allows the build-up
of perchlorates and other salts which are highly soluble and would otherwise be
washed away, which is why they are rare on Earth. This is where the <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-closest-i-will-ever-get-to-mars.html">Atacama Desert</a> comes in as, </span><u><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-47183451/extreme-rainfall-has-led-to-deadly-floods-in-northern-chile">recent floods notwithstanding</a></span></u><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">, this is one of the
driest places on Earth and so is one of the few places where perchlorates are present
in the soil in significant amounts. This, combined with the low abundance of
organic matter in the desert soil, due to its inhospitability to most life,
makes the Atacama a (relatively) easy option for testing out ideas about Mars.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGeCWmmKkuYMZiCtkePI4jZDR_6L3sq4D4JSZaYFvktBKDT1n4tvFCxV7sfETDb403cD-6BKICwPRx2kaclqToBXYOR2IXjo-gYS8PczY6mwP0qIdOps53oZwe16B-lvHid6vNSEM4PAs/s1600/DSC00769.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGeCWmmKkuYMZiCtkePI4jZDR_6L3sq4D4JSZaYFvktBKDT1n4tvFCxV7sfETDb403cD-6BKICwPRx2kaclqToBXYOR2IXjo-gYS8PczY6mwP0qIdOps53oZwe16B-lvHid6vNSEM4PAs/s640/DSC00769.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A rather Martian looking dawn in the Atacama Desert</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The whole premise of this study can essentially be boiled down to: if
these perchlorates are so soluble, can we just wash them out of our samples to
allow us to detect the trace amounts of organic matter that we previously could
not detect?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The answer, it turns out, is yes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When the desert soil samples were initially analysed, by heating them in
a similar fashion to what is carried out on Mars, showed little or no evidence
of any organic matter being present.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sub-samples of those soils were then well washed in very pure water,
filtered and then dried. Unsurprisingly, analysis of the water showed that it
had dissolved most of the soluble salts from the soils and it did not appear to
have washed away any organic matter (which is mostly insoluble in water).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once dried, analyse of these leached (washed) soil samples now allowed
the detection of a variety of organic molecules. The molecules detected were
indicative of the presence of cynobacteria (algae) that are known to be able to
grow even in the dry desert.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This was, all-round, a pretty good result!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This potential for the problematic salts to be washed away has some
pretty exciting implications for our search for organic matter on Mars. If we
want to get around this ‘perchlorate problem’ we can either:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. Wash our Martian samples with water. This, however, introduces a
whole host of issues. Do we take water to Mars, it’s pretty heavy and we risk
creating a nice, wet habitable environment for any Earth microbes that have hitched a ride, a major issue for planetary protection. Do we produce water on
Mars by melting water-ice or extracting it from hydrated minerals, again, this
would probably upset the mission’s Planetary Protection Officer (yes, this is a
<a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Planetary_protection_preventing_microbes_hitchhiking_to_space">real job</a>).<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGvQwS9qklnRTDjE4fdyeKwfHFA_oldQzLA0NtxDgbfHlcZk0hVDzcYYLYA7vADvR4tJd6XYdTNugIbLV5puf_ohCfUtQjEQiKZsdGnJSdPD8LSBtHH0CoOBYhcefPW4Ysp3mC_Gr_HcA/s1600/ice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1280" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGvQwS9qklnRTDjE4fdyeKwfHFA_oldQzLA0NtxDgbfHlcZk0hVDzcYYLYA7vADvR4tJd6XYdTNugIbLV5puf_ohCfUtQjEQiKZsdGnJSdPD8LSBtHH0CoOBYhcefPW4Ysp3mC_Gr_HcA/s400/ice.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buried ice exposed on steep slopes could be a useful water source</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.5pt;">2. Go look for areas with evidence of ‘recent’ water activity on Mars
were the salts will already have been leached away for us. This is the ‘easy’
option and what may have already happened accidentally. A rock unit called the
lower Murray mudstone is the one place on Mars where evidence of complex
organic matter has been found so far, co-incidentally this unit also has one of
the lowest concentrations of perchlorate yet measured on Mars. There is
evidence that, after the mudstones were deposited and buried, fluids flowed
through the rock. These fluids could have leached away any soluble salts
originally present, leaving being the insoluble organic matter, making it
easier to detect. Areas with evidence of current or more recent water activity,
such as above near-surface aquifers and near exposed and melting water-ice
could also be promising areas to check out, however, these will also present
planetary protection issues if there is liquid water available to support life.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0EZuRDHF_fagdqJnwYu2iuSF81ULAy8WNcN83NzDwBfHEL4cBjvSZxVYm6cn21AM7l8nXG4XM8_quhUKxgQZwrDIkoK_SV_3siZOCmer4dp4BwswPOOLM3hKZ9Ecb36gMw6YkyDaN854/s1600/veins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="1041" height="299" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0EZuRDHF_fagdqJnwYu2iuSF81ULAy8WNcN83NzDwBfHEL4cBjvSZxVYm6cn21AM7l8nXG4XM8_quhUKxgQZwrDIkoK_SV_3siZOCmer4dp4BwswPOOLM3hKZ9Ecb36gMw6YkyDaN854/s640/veins.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mineral veins show evidence of fluid flow, these fluids may have 'washed away' the soluble salts</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This was actually a project that Wren had been trying to get published
for a while now and the whole <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/07/latest-catchy-titled-paper-summary.html">organic matter: perchlorate ratio paper</a> we
published last year actually originated as a response to reviewer’s comment to
one of the early drafts of this current work. Happily, the two studies agree
with each other, and NASA’S <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-finds-ancient-organic-material-mysterious-methane-on-mars">detection of organic matter</a> which was announced
while we were working on the re-write, pretty nicely (which is always good).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br />Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-45725455497846012142019-03-12T07:25:00.001-07:002019-03-12T07:54:36.533-07:00Scientists blew up a piece of Mars, you’ll be amazed what they found out!<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Or: Indigenous Organic-Oxidized Fluid Interactions in the
Tissint Mars Meteorite, Jaramillo EA, Royle, SH, Claire MW, Kounaves SP and
Sephton MA. (2019). <i>GRL</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Apologies for the clickbait title, it seems as though this
is now compulsory with all space-related scientific writing. I did blow up a
piece of Mars though and I did find stuff out, you can read all about it in a
paper I co-authored which is <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2018GL081335">now published in GRL</a>. Alternatively, here is a
summary, it is massively biased towards the organic geochemistry side of things as that is the bit I did (and the only bit I really understand).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On the 18<sup>th</sup> July 2011 a meteorite was observed
exploding over the desert in Morocco. Over the following few months fragments
were collected near the village of Tissint, which the meteorite has been named
after. Very few meteorites have actually been found so soon after impact,
usually they have sat around on Earth for many years. In this time they become
contaminated, they sit in dirt, water flows through them and (Earth) microbes make
them their home. Previous studies have shown that the Tissint meteorite is
actually a piece of Mars; Martian igneous rocks that were formed around 600
million years ago were blasted off into space by a large meteorite impact on the surface of that planet around 1 million years ago. This means that the
Tissint meteorite gives us a unique opportunity to explore the geochemical
processes happening in the Martian crust, with the freshest samples we’re going
to get until (if) <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-sample-return-msr/">Mars Sample Return happens</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAuKynDl8Zi3Afj8rvdRV-ZeKi0clnUw2DKOh1-hwZay8Ha0d_QgZczhBoecUxucIMDJzKr2ITT82Tbxusz0EqIHG0mdI8vhZu6sWAvlsrEdzFz7h4o6keCoiu_t25oNzshBlNQj0Kcd4/s1600/tissint+frag.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="247" data-original-width="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAuKynDl8Zi3Afj8rvdRV-ZeKi0clnUw2DKOh1-hwZay8Ha0d_QgZczhBoecUxucIMDJzKr2ITT82Tbxusz0EqIHG0mdI8vhZu6sWAvlsrEdzFz7h4o6keCoiu_t25oNzshBlNQj0Kcd4/s1600/tissint+frag.PNG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the fragment of Tissint used in the study</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Elizabeth, the lead author, had collected samples from the fall
site and analysed them, along with fragments of the meteorite to compare their salt contents as part of her PhD. This had raised a
few questions that needed answering, so I was drafted in to pyrolyze (i.e. flash
heat/blow up) the same samples to see what organic molecules were present and
what they could add to the story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLbxeJqiUzQEDMDWs8O9ENmhJuCiWcqeC37Zc6ClVrunBd7Bse0QLvOwpfNiAT8frLRtbLxGbxtVXMiItkqvgiTO7jJmCjDBT_vW2FiYl0Ky7XeN6i7vA3fO8YBG-tFA7bvkAAoxoPoxY/s1600/mars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLbxeJqiUzQEDMDWs8O9ENmhJuCiWcqeC37Zc6ClVrunBd7Bse0QLvOwpfNiAT8frLRtbLxGbxtVXMiItkqvgiTO7jJmCjDBT_vW2FiYl0Ky7XeN6i7vA3fO8YBG-tFA7bvkAAoxoPoxY/s320/mars.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tiny bits of Mars ready for me to grind up and pyrolyze</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As I have mentioned before in my posts, organic does not
equal biological. We were not looking for aliens here, organic molecules are
just those molecules that contain carbon and hydrogen. While they are the ‘building
blocks’ of life, they also form from non-biological process, including in space
and in hot fluid (hydrothermal) systems deep underground. As such they are
common in meteorites and comets and we expect to find them on Mars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Looking at the organic content had 2 purposes: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. We wanted
to know if the meteorite showed signs of becoming contaminated in the short
period of time before it was found (biologically sourced contaminants from
Earth-bugs finding their way into the samples would be pretty easy to spot);</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2.
If no signs of contamination then we hoped to identify actual Martian organic molecules
and see what they could tell us about ancient Mars.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Neither the inorganic salt content nor the organic molecular
compositions of Tissint suggested that the meteorite was contaminated (Yay!). While
I detected evidence of microbial life in the soil samples, these hadn’t got
into the meteorite. What I did detect in the meteorite were simple aromatic
(ring-shaped) organic molecules, some of which contained sulphur. This was
quite exciting as these were the same kinds of compounds that have been found
in other Martian meteorites AND on the <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1096?ijkey=144a0044b5011c9a750da48a862de0c5d26c6612&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha">surface of Mars</a> by the Curiosity Rover.
Suggesting that we had detected actual Marian organic matter!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAZxDPEESG-YvSY7PoRDeJgX3nm2B_8gPJW8bltKKJfneRpVn0-jMCVw295kzeRKYKYarJZG0tqegtNotibRMXGx07a7XdKM1HbhPnw1a0T7dpWKR0vfSQCEfN84LuYvv9hHnRKZOK-I8/s1600/Eigenbrode+mol+white+background.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAZxDPEESG-YvSY7PoRDeJgX3nm2B_8gPJW8bltKKJfneRpVn0-jMCVw295kzeRKYKYarJZG0tqegtNotibRMXGx07a7XdKM1HbhPnw1a0T7dpWKR0vfSQCEfN84LuYvv9hHnRKZOK-I8/s400/Eigenbrode+mol+white+background.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Organic molecules found on Mars (by Eigenbrode et al. (2018)), we also found various thiophenes, alkylbenzene, chlorobenzene and napthalene in Tissint, along with other sulphur-bearing compounds </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The mixture of salts and organic molecules within Tissint
suggest that less than 600 million years ago, recent in Mars-terms, an oxygen-rich, salty water-brine
flowed through the near-surface crustal rocks of Mars. Electrochemical
reactions likely formed both the organic molecules and the salts in this
fluid as reactions occurred on the surfaces of variously charged minerals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As the composition of this fluid was similar to seawater
and, there was a readily available source of organic carbon as a food source,
this could have produced a temporarily habitable environment near the surface
of Mars during the late Amazonian period. This is much later than the surface of Mars was potentially habitable and although we don't go as far as saying anything actually lived in it, it could have done....</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-54348589293753974932018-10-12T02:45:00.001-07:002018-10-30T03:00:02.715-07:00Summary: 'Survivability of 1-chloronapthalene during simulated early diagenesis...' (more exciting than the title suggests, honest!)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbOGbbuBEnuooCG7FQMtfgaLaSyit2ZZuHPO7zn5DwjGtPtAboXIkjwEPjb7ZnrE08-1w1rwXFazrzV0aW7rSclBRM2zG6hEGAEne4dDK1ncjehOT2TAIXvHO7mPN0HnoTZxu_r83ybsY/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="668" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbOGbbuBEnuooCG7FQMtfgaLaSyit2ZZuHPO7zn5DwjGtPtAboXIkjwEPjb7ZnrE08-1w1rwXFazrzV0aW7rSclBRM2zG6hEGAEne4dDK1ncjehOT2TAIXvHO7mPN0HnoTZxu_r83ybsY/s640/Capture.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
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The shiny full open access version of our latest paper about organic molecules on Mars is now published online at <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JE005711">JGR Planets.</a> While we'd like you to read the whole thing to justify the ridiculous cost of publishing open access, if you can't be bothered then here's a summary, which should be relatively understandable.<br />
<br />
When missions to Mars are looking for past or even present life, the evidence they are searching for is in the form of organic molecules. While not all organic molecules are formed by biological activity, some compounds, like certain fatty acids, are what we term ‘biomarkers’ and the detection of those would be very exciting as they would be a strong indication of Martian life.<br />
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Even detecting non-life-related (abiological) organic molecules on Mars would be exciting, we are sure that they should be present on Mars as the universe is full of them. Meteorites and comets are rich in organic matter, sourced from the primordial material of the early universe, and Mars must have been ‘seeded’ with these ingredients for life in much the same way as Earth.</div>
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Most attempts (<a href="https://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/06/scientifically-accurate-non-clickbait.html">bar one</a>) to detect organic
molecules on Mars, however, have only found simple chlorinated organic compounds
– those with one or more chlorine molecules attached. These are not what we would expect from any of the proposed sources of organic matter on the Martian surface, they are too small and simplistic, and the chlorination is a bit weird, and so something must have altered Martian organic matter to create them.<br />
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But when? and how? This is what we have tried to figure out....</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Simple chlorinated molecules found on Mars</td></tr>
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2 competing hypothesise for the source of these chlorinated molecules have been
put forward by previous work:</div>
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1) It has been suggested that they
may have formed on the Martian surface via reactions between chlorine-bearing
salts (especially the <a href="https://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2017/12/latest-paper-summary-effect-of.html">perchlorates </a>that I work with) and those organic
compounds delivered by meteorites. In this case, the chlorinated organics discovered
by the Curiosity Rover would be as 4.5 billion years old, the same age
as the rocks they were extracted from. They would have had to survive the increased
heat and pressure of being buried to about 3 km depth on a warmer ancient Mars.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgro7lvNct_y_wMHKLPx3TIjCzMPD9hstP0DusPXrAsxh8FoBhsezbcIMJuLuz1vFhAWctgW7XK12Slf0Kyre81NZv-VFhL2IrKSJQu7WRVWXFNpFHeUOUX95o6EK1yWylfI3rqXoYL9Ug/s1600/sheepbed.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="700" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgro7lvNct_y_wMHKLPx3TIjCzMPD9hstP0DusPXrAsxh8FoBhsezbcIMJuLuz1vFhAWctgW7XK12Slf0Kyre81NZv-VFhL2IrKSJQu7WRVWXFNpFHeUOUX95o6EK1yWylfI3rqXoYL9Ug/s400/sheepbed.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Sheepbed Mudstone, Gale Crater, Mars, where Curiosity has found most of the chlorinated compounds (from <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2016JE005225">Sutter et al., 2017</a>)</td></tr>
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2) It has also been suggested that
they are formed inside the analysis instrument of the Rover when organic carbon
(either from the analysed Martian rocks or just contamination from Earth) is
heated along with chlorine-bearing salts that are also known to be in the
samples. The salts break down when heated to produce both oxygen and
hydrochloric acid which reacts with any organic matter present. In this
scenario, anything interesting is mostly<a href="https://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/07/latest-catchy-titled-paper-summary.html"> burned away</a> to carbon dioxide and
carbon monoxide and lost to detection with the few surviving fragments of
organic molecules becoming chlorinated. In this case the detected molecules
would be formed just before detection and so survivability is not an issue.</div>
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To test if the first hypothesis was
even possible we examined the ability of simple chlorinated organic molecules
to survive the high pressures and temperatures associated with burial over
geological timescales. We did this by subjecting these molecules to
geologically-relevant pressures in a small reaction vessel, known as a bomblet,
which is basically a glorified pressure cooker. Obviously we didn’t have a few
billion years to wait around so we had to speed up the process. By increasing
the temperature to speed up the reaction rate (remember high school chemistry?) we squeezed most of the history
of Mars into a weekend.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9kMKvpzIXeTWis1eWjhavag9vawLZtobR_ZWcP4YSjKMBej-InEleucJ82oPX5oSrrAbQJ4IXSnv4Jxn0SaD9IQcVQchyphenhyphenyaBX-Q5aTt3XJ7Y8BShQ-_0x_Z7B6Vsa4nJCSWp-YsQlzs8/s1600/bombs.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9kMKvpzIXeTWis1eWjhavag9vawLZtobR_ZWcP4YSjKMBej-InEleucJ82oPX5oSrrAbQJ4IXSnv4Jxn0SaD9IQcVQchyphenhyphenyaBX-Q5aTt3XJ7Y8BShQ-_0x_Z7B6Vsa4nJCSWp-YsQlzs8/s400/bombs.png" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How to squeeze 4.5 billion years on Martian geological history into a weekend. Clockwise from top left: Freshly made bomblets ready to be filled with the test chlorinated compounds. Sat inside the larger bomb - the whole thing can be filled with larger volume of sample if necessary. Making sure everything is tight so it doesn't explode when pressurised. Heating up in the reaction vessel to cook for the weekend.</td></tr>
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By repeating this experiment at
various temperatures and pressures, it was possible for Jonny Tan, one of the PhD students in the research group, to do some fancy maths and computer simulations stability of the molecule
under conditions it would be subjected to on Mars. This bit was all over my head, but if you want to play around with his model, its all open source and available on <a href="https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/ArrheniusModel/blob/master/ChloronapthaleneModellingWork.py">github</a>.</div>
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It was found that the bond between the chlorine atom and the rest of the hydrocarbon molecule is quite weak and breaks easily. This means that, on a warmer
ancient Mars, when the sediments the chlorinated molecules were detected in
were deposited, the increased surface temperatures would have promoted the loss
of chlorine relatively rapidly. Intact chlorinated organic molecules would have
been unlikely to even survive the first 1 billion years, never mind the 4
billion needed to get to the present day in detectable concentrations. This
makes the first hypothesis (that these molecules formed on the Martian surface and are ancient) rather unlikely.</div>
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The chlorinated organics detected
on Mars in ancient sediments are therefore likely to have been formed very recently,
most probably when heating in the Rover's analysis oven promoted reactions between Martian organic matter and chlorine-bearing salts.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQAiVO75jUDcSr1-iT7kcclmKapEpWTbslSVADpzgEqZ-39v7TXEps8_diy-58h0cx0o7drrxF2qeBo17G8liY6dzAMerHtqGRXoXfZl8JUwUbwE4mb_nV43NjzL0xPlDmi0F8ngSMY3Y/s1600/curiosity.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="943" data-original-width="1600" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQAiVO75jUDcSr1-iT7kcclmKapEpWTbslSVADpzgEqZ-39v7TXEps8_diy-58h0cx0o7drrxF2qeBo17G8liY6dzAMerHtqGRXoXfZl8JUwUbwE4mb_nV43NjzL0xPlDmi0F8ngSMY3Y/s640/curiosity.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Whilst this conclusion isn't going to blow anyone's mind, as most studies had assumed this anyway, it's good to have some actual experimental evidence to back these things up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-47863918692979279812018-07-27T03:55:00.000-07:002018-07-27T03:55:21.789-07:00Latest (catchy titled) paper summary: Perchlorate‐Driven Combustion of Organic Matter During Pyrolysis‐Gas Chromatography‐Mass Spectrometry: Implications for Organic Matter Detection on Earth and Mars<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz3BkuHHQYTap4c9fQm1mPA3g7-1qJ4A7qjXpqmBXLDgI0FmNv6V58cgHyaYVxmyPdDOFPx2cHYmShdeYlu4XIlxUWxp0is17zWrpm9WEnECVRZGUZLLvR0Hpp1lOc7mVS5DYrGSmVNkw/s1600/title.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="606" data-original-width="1275" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz3BkuHHQYTap4c9fQm1mPA3g7-1qJ4A7qjXpqmBXLDgI0FmNv6V58cgHyaYVxmyPdDOFPx2cHYmShdeYlu4XIlxUWxp0is17zWrpm9WEnECVRZGUZLLvR0Hpp1lOc7mVS5DYrGSmVNkw/s640/title.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Credit: JGR: Planets</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our latest paper is now out and openly accessible to read </span><span style="color: #5b9bd5; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JE005615">here</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. I’d rather like
you to read the full version so we can justify the £2500 it cost to remove the
subscriber-only paywall and make it open access. However if you CBA to plough through all the technical
jargon (there’s not too much I hope) here’s a little (hopefully) more accessible
(and shorter) summary of what we found out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As you probably know if you’ve read any of my other posts,
my research is mostly on the interactions between organic matter and minerals
on Mars, with the overall aim of trying to figure out why we’re having such a
hard time detecting organic matter on the Martian surface. If you’re new here
then what you need to know first is that organic matter, in this sense, does
not necessarily have anything to do with life (whatever recent <span style="color: red;"><a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/06/scientifically-accurate-non-clickbait.html">headlines </a></span>have said). <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound">Organic molecules </a>are just molecules that contain carbon, they are the building
blocks of life BUT can also be produced from non-biological processes – even in
deep space.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We know that organic matter should be widespread on the
Martian surface as it will be delivered there by meteorites, comets and
interplanetary dust particles. There may also have occurred processes in
Martian history that created organic molecules on Mars itself (although this is
less certain), and if there is, or has, ever been life on Mars then that would
also leave behind molecular traces of itself. Even if the only source of
organic matter to the Martian surface is from outer space, and the high
radiation environment of the Martian surface (there’s very little atmosphere
for protection) breaks that down somewhat, the constant delivery of organic
matter over billions of years should have left something behind we can detect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oddly, though, despite trying since the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/redplanet/viking.html">Viking </a>life
detection mission back in the mid ‘70s, we have failed to detect any evidence
of complex organic matter until very <span style="color: red;"><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-44411846/nasa-building-blocks-of-life-on-mars-found">recently </a></span>(more
on that later). All attempts to look for organic matter in the Martian rocks
and soil have used thermal decomposition – heating up the sample in an oven so
that anything in there breaks down into small enough molecules to be identified
by the on-board instruments. However, mostly, they only detected (at best) very
simple, small, <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014JE004737">chlorinated </a>organic molecules along with carbon dioxide and
carbon monoxide gases. Not as interesting as we’d hoped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">Simple, chlorinated organic molecules found on Mars previously</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The discovery of perchlorate in the Martian soil by the
Phoenix lander in 2008 gave an answer to this puzzle of the missing organic matter.
Perchlorate is an ion made up of 1 chlorine and 4 oxygen atoms, when you heat
this up it breaks down to produce lots of oxygen – it basically explodes! This
makes it useful for rocket fuel (ammonium perchlorate was used as the
propellant for the space shuttle rocket boosters) but not so useful when you’re
looking for tiny amounts of organic matter which are in the same soil/rock sample.
When you heat up a sample that contains both perchlorate and organic matter the
oxygen release causes the organic matter to combust (burn away) and be lost as
carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide – not helpful for analysis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We therefore wanted to find out the true potential of this
reaction for destroying evidence of organic matter to answer the question: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How much organic matter, relative to
perchlorate, do we need in a sample to be able to detect it?</i> If we could
answer this, maybe we could figure out where, if anywhere, on Mars could have a
ratio more favourable for detection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To do this I made up lots of different mixtures of magnesium
perchlorate and charcoal, (charcoal is superficially similar to the organic
matter in meteorites, but much more accessible) and flash heated these samples
to see what gases they gave off. By analysing the relative proportions of
carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide given off it was possible to rapidly see the
extent of combustion. If there was too much perchlorate/too little organic
matter in a sample then all of the organic matter’s carbon would be saturated
by oxygen - complete combustion - and only carbon dioxide would be given off.
If there was too little perchlorate/too much organic matter for this to occur then
it would be the oxygen that would saturate and not all of the carbon would be
combusted, this incomplete combustion would produce carbon monoxide as well as
carbon dioxide and there would, in theory, also be surviving organic molecules
that were not burned away. The point at which we started producing carbon
dioxide was termed the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">critical ratio</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If we have too much perchlorate and not enough organic matter (subcritical ratio) then there is enough oxygen produced to saturate all the carbon so the organic matter is fully combusted to carbon dioxide. If we have enough organic matter and less perchlorate (supercritical ratio) then we run out of oxygen, not all of the carbon can be saturated so we have partial combustion, producing carbon monoxide as well and organic molecules can survive to be detected. </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It turned out that this critical ratio was about 11 times as
much charcoal as magnesium perchlorate. And by doing some maths we figured out
that this meant (as the charcoal is a little over 50 % carbon) that on Mars
you’d need about 6 times as much organic carbon than magnesium perchlorate in a
sample to be able to detect it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While this paper was out in <u><span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-system-worksoccasionally.html">review</a></span></u><span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;">, </span>there was a big NASA announcement (link to <span style="color: red;"><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1096">paper </a></span>and <span style="color: red;"><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-finds-ancient-organic-material-mysterious-methane-on-mars">summary</a></span>).
They’d finally found evidence of complex organic matter on Mars, but only in
two samples. This suggested to us that for some reason these ‘new’ (they were
analysed in 2015, it just took a long time to get the work published) samples
must have an organic carbon/perchlorate mixture above our critical ratio and
all the other samples previously analysed must have one below the critical
ratio. Thankfully for us, someone had made and <span style="color: red;"><a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016JE005225">published</a> </span>those measurements of perchlorate levels in all of the analysed samples.
It turned out that, yes, the samples that showed evidence of complex organic
matter had about a tenth of the perchlorate content as the samples that only
simple chlorinated molecules were detected in – kind of nicely proving our
point for us, thanks NASA!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPKvCdoWblPE6tHzB8rnj2HhxpHRVdi0OOjjtxdvJn0VgTN5GauoIxR7uhyEBkwzIGJxGd6nPKJt-ZkQ77TCb3ruw9JKW-LXLXjoeSCfXGmxM9pdnOLNIxWIIiQ6EKFpE4wZWg2D_wYUU/s1600/Eigenbrode+mol+white+background.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPKvCdoWblPE6tHzB8rnj2HhxpHRVdi0OOjjtxdvJn0VgTN5GauoIxR7uhyEBkwzIGJxGd6nPKJt-ZkQ77TCb3ruw9JKW-LXLXjoeSCfXGmxM9pdnOLNIxWIIiQ6EKFpE4wZWg2D_wYUU/s400/Eigenbrode+mol+white+background.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">More complicated organic molecules that have recently been detected on Mars<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This demonstrated that the perchlorate levels on Mars are
variable and that this is important. If we want to find any more organic matter
to increase our knowledge of extra-terrestrial organic chemistry, or even for
life detection, we must look where the perchlorate levels are reduced.
Perchlorates are highly soluble, this is why they are rare on Earth except in
hyper-arid regions such as the </span><a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-closest-i-will-ever-get-to-mars.html" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Atacama </a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Desert,
so we should be looking for areas of recent water activity where they may have
been washed away.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTQX9Z05qMmsRp2lgqzWkn_8tnudmH78rOyXsIjoGy0Dtwi-3dsGr80k12UhXVqRpA7_P8B_gmQYrgobm_VPS-XIyqUdL7FlJpMhrLX1NZJV8IhplfXjEbss8a32gIdzwcKi8tYR4jR8M/s1600/Curisoity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="1024" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTQX9Z05qMmsRp2lgqzWkn_8tnudmH78rOyXsIjoGy0Dtwi-3dsGr80k12UhXVqRpA7_P8B_gmQYrgobm_VPS-XIyqUdL7FlJpMhrLX1NZJV8IhplfXjEbss8a32gIdzwcKi8tYR4jR8M/s400/Curisoity.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where should Curiosity look next? (Credit: NASA)</td></tr>
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Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-30833739430825591382018-07-26T08:26:00.000-07:002018-07-26T08:26:07.964-07:00My first conference talks, two very different experiences<br />
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I flew all the way out to California last week to present work
at the COSPAR (Committee of Outer Space Research) conference in Pasadena. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I had
been accepted to give two talks which was both pretty exciting and terrifying
as I had somehow avoided ever giving a talk at a conference until now. Poster
presentations, which I have done many of, are way more chilled (in my
experience). You stand by your poster for a few hours and if anyone is
interested they come and find you for a one-on-one chat, and there’s usually
free beer to help the science flow. A talk on the other hand is (for me) a much
more stressful proposition. Standing up in front of your peers, which may
include eminent scientists who may ask horrifically complicated questions at
the end, or may even just stand up and denounce your work to the whole audience
(this dick-move is unfortunately quite a common occurrence). As such, I was
quite nervous about the whole thing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Both of my talks were about very different subjects. One for
a project that is only a minor part of my job and I am in no way an expert on
the subject matter – I was just the compiler of a large group’s work; the other
on my latest research, which I’m pretty psyched to tell people about. So I felt
somewhat worried about screwing up the first and not doing justice to the work
of actual experts, but pretty good and excited about the latter.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What went down, however, was the complete opposite of my
expectations. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In first talk, which was the one I was panicking about, went
surprisingly well. I was presenting the chapter we have been writing for the
Planetary Protection of the Outer Solar System (<a href="http://pposs.org/">PPOSS</a>) project. This is a
report on how we can improve future organic contamination control for missions
to the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I was basically arguing that organic molecules (from
plastics, oils, grease, etc.) on spaceflight hardware pose as great a threat to
our attempts to detect life in the outer solar system as microbial hitchhikers
(the current main target for planetary protection efforts). This is because, if
we have a ‘dirty’ instrument we may only detect the ‘dirt’. In a normal
environment this is often not such an issue as we can usually recognise
contaminants. However, we do not understand much about the environments of the
icy moons, especially the radiation levels, and how that will affect the
contamination molecules, the molecules which could be evidence of
extra-terrestrial life (what we call ‘biomarkers’), and any other non-biological
organic molecules that are present on the surface. Basically we’re looking for
a needle in a haystack, except we don’t know what the needle is made out of,
nor what the haystack is made out of, if we don’t have a clean instrument we’ll
never figure this out. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhof6G9ZN2GTJuM2Ly5xgiTGTeVxTfaQWavFvRW-Oaq-W2V05Io6tfJpdB9OezViRh7RsyIbpWWXh1OnYZdmu6L-hJ8jD9FhA66bNW0yftetGjaCPrOf16YbWZ02Qiay9-sInX9scg57z4/s1600/titan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1023" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhof6G9ZN2GTJuM2Ly5xgiTGTeVxTfaQWavFvRW-Oaq-W2V05Io6tfJpdB9OezViRh7RsyIbpWWXh1OnYZdmu6L-hJ8jD9FhA66bNW0yftetGjaCPrOf16YbWZ02Qiay9-sInX9scg57z4/s400/titan.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Titan, one of the Icy Moons of Saturn has a very complicated organic chemistry. To have any chance of understanding it we need to not contaminate our analyses with organic molecules from Earth as they may be greatly altered by the complex radiation environment and unrecognizable for what they are by the time they get there (image credit: NASA)</td></tr>
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This becomes a planetary protection issue as if we detect
our own contamination and mistake it for evidence of extra-terrestrial life
everybody will get really excited and future missions will waste a lot of time
and money trying to find out more about these imaginary aliens. Conversely, the
contamination levels could be so high that they mask a real life signal – in
this scenario we would lose our interest in looking for life on the moon, maybe
never checking again and instead only sending ‘dirty’ non-life detection
missions to look at other aspects of the moon. This could permanently
contaminate the moon and destroy any chances of detecting that life there in
the future. Both of these scenarios are pretty bad for planetary protection
whose main goal is to avoid jeopardizing the search for extra-terrestrial life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Despite the fact that I was delivering this talk first thing
in the morning, telling a room packed full of real planetary protection experts
(I’m just a confused geologist remember) how to do their job it went down
pretty well. It triggered questions and discussion on whether organic
contamination control is a planetary protection issue, exactly what we were
trying to achieve.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWYNshx_UE9an5ivhPJdvhyphenhyphennZXae_FEqT3olATkbf39S6clnVT3s9qhr0BLDJ-JqmOxYX9kIdzTz5VV8h_Z9MN9Ht4LUXZwL1WrVfp-0EgYCiM8u_4F7TvRI_8Na6rsQXd11fx8GJuWdA/s1600/pposs+talk.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="914" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWYNshx_UE9an5ivhPJdvhyphenhyphennZXae_FEqT3olATkbf39S6clnVT3s9qhr0BLDJ-JqmOxYX9kIdzTz5VV8h_Z9MN9Ht4LUXZwL1WrVfp-0EgYCiM8u_4F7TvRI_8Na6rsQXd11fx8GJuWdA/s400/pposs+talk.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me doing science (credit ESF-Science Connect)</td></tr>
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After the success of the first talk I was feeling pretty
confident for my second where I was going to be presenting what I actually know
about – my own research on the interactions between organic matter and minerals
on Mars. This was mid-afternoon on the Thursday, what you’d expect to be the
perfect slot: not too early or late so people haven’t woken up or have shut
down, not right at the start or end of the week so people haven’t arrived yet
or already left and not just before or just after lunch so that people aren’t
too hungry or in their post-lunch daze.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In this talk I was presenting the findings in our latest
paper, this will shortly be available open access but is currently behind a
paywall <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018JE005615">here</a>. I talked about how we’d calculated the minimum about of organic
matter there would need to be in a Martian sample for a rover to be able to
detect it despite the presence of problematic minerals (using current
techniques). I then showed how this worked with samples from the closest
environment we have to Mars on Earth, the <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-closest-i-will-ever-get-to-mars.html">Atacama Desert</a>, and then applied this
new knowledge to explain why organic matter has suddenly been found on Mars
after 40 years of trying.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nobody cared.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The end of my talk and the customary ‘I’d be happy to answer
any questions’ was met with glazed expressions and silence. I half expected a
tumbleweed to blow down the central aisle of the conference hall. Normally in
these situations the chair of the session will have a question prepared, but
even they were unable to hide their disinterest.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRcrojPsHusW3r7PaUqRmsgFtsB9MbOS7DNgF0S8kCSkdsdshXjvafD4sBJ-ChXLUc0T3_HXASgin4KiJTuxbOKT9hNc3d1WiOvG9louLNjR4GBaPin2XNmWErhv6RGbB_-EEFiHG1PY/s1600/giphy.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="138" data-original-width="300" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRcrojPsHusW3r7PaUqRmsgFtsB9MbOS7DNgF0S8kCSkdsdshXjvafD4sBJ-ChXLUc0T3_HXASgin4KiJTuxbOKT9hNc3d1WiOvG9louLNjR4GBaPin2XNmWErhv6RGbB_-EEFiHG1PY/s400/giphy.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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As an early career researcher, giving my second ever
conference talk, on something I spent months working on, this was pretty
crushing. I could only scurry back to my seat and, somewhat shell-shocked,
watch the rest of the afternoon’s session.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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What had I done wrong, it had all seemed to go smoothly from
my end? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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As the rest of the session unfolded it all became clear. It
was not that I had delivered bad science, I had delivered the wrong science for
the crowd’s interest. While I am primarily a lab rat, doing experiments to try
to understand the results coming back from the Mars rovers, everybody else in
the session worked on the satellites orbiting Mars. They were all interested in
atmospheric gas measurements or photographs of surface landforms which is what
all the other talks were about. This was, for once, not my fault. I should never
have been given a talk in this session. While it was titled, ‘Mars Science
Results’ and so should have been suitable, because of the dominance of orbital
data it was not a diverse enough audience. This was on the session organisers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Despite this realisation this pretty much ruined the rest of
the conference for me, it was just too much of a downer after the way I’d built
it all up in my head beforehand – I am NOT a confident public speaker in the
slightest so had really had to psyche myself up. <o:p></o:p></div>
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This dependence on the right audience being present seems to
be the major crucial thing to get something good out of a conference
presentation of any sort. I’ve also had this with poster sessions in the past.
I stood around for hours with no one interested enough to come up for a chat
next to a poster at the European Geophysical Union conference a few years ago.
I was presenting some my PhD research on high resolution palaeoclimate
reconstruction based on the chemistry of coral skeletons. Everybody else in the
session was doing things with water or plant chemistry – but we were all using ‘isotopes
for novel environmental studies’ or whatever the title of the session was. Dead
sessions like this are excruciating, you’re almost praying for the crazy
‘scientist’ who’s had a few too many at the free bar to come up and discuss his
latest theory with you – there’s often one. Other poster sessions I’ve had
great discussions which have led to ideas to improve the work I’m presenting or
have created ideas for new projects. Although sometimes I just make a tit of
myself, while intimidated and slightly star struck, in front of the top
scientists in my field (although as long as they leave with a copy of my latest
paper its all good…right?).<o:p></o:p></div>
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The issue seems to be that you can’t really gauge what it’s
going to be like when you submit your abstract – the session titles and
descriptions are always so vague. I guess if this happens you just have to
shrug it off and just take it as a good practice run for the next time you have
a more interested crowd. It’s not put me off anyway, now I really need to pull
my finger out and write that AGU abstract, hopefully the crowd there will be
better…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-86324484335419550842018-07-06T09:18:00.002-07:002018-07-06T09:18:21.772-07:00The System Works....OccasionallyI've said some pretty nasty things about Reviewer 2 in the past, they always seem intent on screwing us over in some way or another. However, we've just had a paper accepted for publication and this manuscript's journey through the system has finally (after 3 prior publications) shown me how the system is supposed to work.<br />
<br />
My previous manuscript had a rather rocky <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.com/2017/11/adventures-in-peer-review-or-there-and.html">journey to publication</a>, with numerous rejections from editors (too specialist interest) and having to appeal the decision of a particularly arsey Reviewer 2 who suggested rejection even after we'd done all they'd asked - months of extra experimentation.<br />
<br />
This time, the reviewers - especially Reviewer 2 - picked apart the gaps and weaknesses in the manuscript that were mostly in there as we forget that outside our tiny lab other people have other ways of thinking about things so we need to explain everything:<br />
<br />
'please elaborate...'<br />
<br />
'how do you justify using this technique/sample...?'<br />
<br />
'why did you not do it this way rather than the way I'd do it...?',<br />
<br />
They also found a (rather glaring) omission, we'd been using carbon monoxide/carbon dioxide ratios detected by the GC-MS as a quick proxy for the survival of excess organic carbon on combustion - but had offered no proof that this actually worked other than theoretically, oops!<br />
<br />
And they used their expertise to suggest how we could fix these problems to make the study better, all written in the sort of way that suggested they were genuinely interested in our findings and wanted to help.<br />
<br />
Yes, this resulted in extra lab time to do a few more experiments (and the odd bit of swearing at the mass spectrometer), but the extra work gathered greatly strengthened the manuscript - and I made a real pretty new figure with the new data. <br />
<br />
When it came back from its second round of review Reviewer 1 was happy and Reviewer 2 had a few very minor comments, the worst of which just needed me to delete a sentence where I'd slipped into what could be construed as somewhat wild over speculation about some of the Mars data.<br />
<br />
I genuinely mean the thanks to the two (anonymous) reviewers in the acknowledgements this time, they really did make the science better.<br />
<br />
This is how the peer review system is supposed to work.<br />
<br />
Don't be a dick.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-89402652070106341912018-06-08T08:56:00.000-07:002018-06-08T08:56:06.084-07:00Scientifically accurate, non clickbait title: NASA finds organic matter on Mars which is probably not evidence of life but there's a very slim chance it could be<br />
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<b>Warning – angry rant, lots of swears<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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So after the weeks of hype build-up NASA released their
latest big findings from the Curiosity Rover last night. Sensationalist
clickbait tweets and headlines from the scientific media seem to tell us that
we’ve finally got direct evidence of life on Mars:<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Scientists for the first time have confidently identified
on Mars a collection of carbon molecules used and produced by living organisms’
@nytimes<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Mars has complex organic material that may be from ancient
life’ @newscientist<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘NASA finds ‘building
blocks of life’ in 3 billion-year-old lakebed on Mars….is there finally proof
of alien life on the red planet’ The Sun<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that bastion of
great science reporting The Express goes full on with ‘Life on Mars: NASA finds
‘HOLY GRAIL’ in rover search for ALIEN LIFE’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and ‘Nasa UNCOVERS evidence of LIFE on Mars in
latest SHOCK revelations’- actually fucking capitalising the bollocks bits,
seriously?!?!?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgISuocbd0uy3m4Lh98CX00lmKTHNoCX5ogZeEPPr-QAHDapPHIdGZan7z9k33L_-CvGI9_M1jUdKubIxsaqCE7-14HSLJMasXFe6VPnZgv0XzHNPv-WavP7wczf_UwfXzxiMwpWyEW7ng/s1600/Express.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="987" height="434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgISuocbd0uy3m4Lh98CX00lmKTHNoCX5ogZeEPPr-QAHDapPHIdGZan7z9k33L_-CvGI9_M1jUdKubIxsaqCE7-14HSLJMasXFe6VPnZgv0XzHNPv-WavP7wczf_UwfXzxiMwpWyEW7ng/s640/Express.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Really,?!? FUCKING REALLY?!?!?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Now, there’s nothing wrong with the articles themselves but
as has been shown time and time again plenty of people don’t actually read past
the headlines and a quick check of the comments show that we now have
people believing NASA has announced finding life on Mars (although if you can
be bothered to comment why not read the full article)… Unfortunately
rather than being interested in good science communication it appears, yet
again, that the media is only interested in getting website traffic so more
people see some fucking annoying pop-up of a new Volvo or something.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you’ve actually read this far you won't be surprised to learn that the truth is nowhere near
as exciting as the headlines suggest. Basically NASA has found exactly what it
has expected, but failed, to find since the Viking missions in the 1970’s,
organic macromolecular material. While this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could</i>
have a biological origin, there is NO evidence for this! Organic material just
like this is produced abiotically (without life) throughout the universe. We
find very similar molecules in meteorites that have fallen to Earth and the impact of meteorites along
with comets and interplanetary dust particles will have delivered organic
matter to the Martian surface. It has been calculated that 100-300 metric tons
of organic matter is delivered to the Martian surface in this way EACH YEAR.
There are also ways in which the organic matter could have been produced on
Mars itself through hydrothermal or igneous processes. While we cannot rule out
the possibility that these molecules are evidence of ancient life that lived in
the lake these sediments were deposited in this is the least likely source, we
KNOW the other processes would have happened, we have NO EVIDENCE of life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What I think is the most interesting thing here, and one
that is not really touched on in the paper (presumably because it’s in Science
so they didn’t have the page space) is WHY we have detected these molecules
now? There have been hints of organic matter in previous samples from the
Sheepbed mudstone further up the formation, but these were low responses and
all simple chlorinated molecules, these more complex molecules have been found
in the older Murray mudstones. It is suggested that these, being buried deeper,
have been less exposed to the destructive effects of cosmic radiation, but over
the time periods involved could a little bit less exposure really have saved
them? One of the reasons we hadn’t found complex organic material up until this
point was because it was destroyed during analysis. Minerals in the Martian
soil (such as perchlorates) were releasing oxygen when heated and this caused
the organic material to combust and be lost to analysis (this is what I work
on). For these molecules to be detected now, there must either be more of them
in the sediment or less of the oxidising minerals and it is interesting to
think what processes could have concentrated the organic matter or removed the
minerals in these units…<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m not going to go into any more detail on the science side
of things, everything I want to say revolves around some unpublished work we’ve
currently got in review and I’m not supposed to discuss that kind of stuff till
it’s out. Needless to say we’ll be getting it back to update it with these
latest findings before it can be published.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s a link to the actual <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1096?ijkey=144a0044b5011c9a750da48a862de0c5d26c6612&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha">paper </a>in Science<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And a nicely put together <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1068.full">write up </a>by someone who’s much
better at these things than I am</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-51998931881624208262018-04-03T04:25:00.002-07:002018-04-03T04:25:53.601-07:00The closest I will ever get to Mars - Atacama fieldwork<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg34Rlp51ksWN6PxeeJVCvqdqv3v3KnksKbdG8g7njugVzYuel10JPD21_9lBOM-ihMkNCZhWJT5vRMjeEsbC89ST4_w8cWQgZgnebgPUeTM32sAk1cg0bHpy59LtPeBu6G9OGFt0RQMm8/s1600/DSC00880.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg34Rlp51ksWN6PxeeJVCvqdqv3v3KnksKbdG8g7njugVzYuel10JPD21_9lBOM-ihMkNCZhWJT5vRMjeEsbC89ST4_w8cWQgZgnebgPUeTM32sAk1cg0bHpy59LtPeBu6G9OGFt0RQMm8/s640/DSC00880.JPG" width="640" /></a><br />
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I've just got back from a week's fieldwork in the Atacama Desert, Chile. The part of this massive, over 100,000 square kilometer area, desert we were in is one of the driest places on Earth - only the Antarctic Dry Valleys have a lower annual precipitation.<br />
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I was participating in a field campaign organised by the HOME (Habitability of Martian Environments) project with a German-based team of astrobiologists, microbiologists and astronomers. This project focuses on the Atacama as it is the most Mars-like environment we can study first hand. Here, they test theories of how microbial life may adapt and survive to the harshest hyper-arid, high-UV and high-salinity environments, as they may have on Mars. This group has just published, to a massive <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43215617">media </a>reception, a <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/20/1714341115">study</a> showing that microbial life can exist in a dormant state, underground, possibly for 1000's of years, even in the driest part of the desert - blooming after rare rainfall events. Maybe this is how life adapted to the gradually drying climate on Mars billions of years ago.<br />
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The desert was amazing, the landscape really was Martian. No signs or sounds of life (except for the occasional long-distance travelling vulture) and just reddish dry, dusty rocks and sands as far as the eye could see. It really did look just like the images coming back from Gale Crater on Mars - except for the bright blue sky.<br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiJ8OQI1QAwugA3oDC00yPO0MpoGCrDw17CsJDa0_2E3lDGdosZg35xhqRoYTLuq57U4EVE4rlmLA3NWl5JgB71-cpOZuh6iQfbi5E_P6JAFkbhIwtcjH7J4r8QBEdkXABxHFZYRD37os/s1600/DSC00769.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiJ8OQI1QAwugA3oDC00yPO0MpoGCrDw17CsJDa0_2E3lDGdosZg35xhqRoYTLuq57U4EVE4rlmLA3NWl5JgB71-cpOZuh6iQfbi5E_P6JAFkbhIwtcjH7J4r8QBEdkXABxHFZYRD37os/s400/DSC00769.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">The Atacama or Mars?</td></tr>
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We were in the desert to collect more samples to further this research and other work on hyper-arid soils and Martian analogs carried out by the many collaborators of the group. Unfortunately, it appeared as though the hyper-arid core of the desert had been a bit wet recently... Evidence of heavy rainfall and past standing bodies of water were everywhere. Even the pits, dug in previous years, that we had planned to sample from had been half infilled by water-transported debris - shifting this was to prove hard work and very time consuming.<br />
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We did think early on in the week that we had found a breakthrough to this problem of reaching the, now reburied, ancient sediments as a massively deep (45 m) hole was found, purely by accident by a team member looking for a quiet toilet spot. This looked to have been drilled as some part of recent mining activity which is all over the place in the area. As the only climber in the group I was tasked with figuring out how we could safely descend into the hole and collect samples from previously unexplored depths. Luckily there was a climbing shop in Antagofasta, the nearest town, and after a bit of language-barrier related fun (what is screwgate in Spanish anyone?) we managed to purchase everything necessary for 2 people to go down at a time - including over 250 m of various ropes and cord.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The hole, laser measurements showed it was 45 m down to the water</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOhKRJXnByZ-wbmdg3NkKTKW29hiW-H363zcIDBCAD7cKYungbVfxl7HgfPRELExi6rzR_ti4LQRm5wjUUI6wCu5RcOnFWB3D5k4YytQVOOU-NJFHKDaURTDO-QfhxoqUQUxIk5yhyXyw/s1600/DSC00739.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOhKRJXnByZ-wbmdg3NkKTKW29hiW-H363zcIDBCAD7cKYungbVfxl7HgfPRELExi6rzR_ti4LQRm5wjUUI6wCu5RcOnFWB3D5k4YytQVOOU-NJFHKDaURTDO-QfhxoqUQUxIk5yhyXyw/s400/DSC00739.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Practicing at camp</td></tr>
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After a fun evening teaching the rest of the group how to put on harnesses and use a gri-gri (autoblocking belay device) to descend and self-belay I rigged up a complex system of anchors (hammered in stakes), safety lines and knotted hand lines to re-ascend with. Then descended down the hole to test the system while everyone else watched. Desert dust clogged the ropes and belay device which made abseiling down difficult and jerky, dust and small rocks fell from the poorly consolidated side walls of the narrow hole. As I got deeper it got cold quickly. I stopped at 10 m to test how easily it was to get out again and pulled myself onto the 'rope ladder' hand line I'd made to climb back up on.<br />
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Fuck<br />
<br />
The Gri-Gri was completely seized up, dust had coated the thick 10 mm rope I'd bought to be extra safe and the extra friction meant it would take both hands to haul it through the belay device, I only had one free as the other was needed to take my weight off the rope I was on and onto the handline. This made reascending, safely, by the planned means impossible, ~If I had ascended the handline I would not have been able to self-belay at the same time so if the thin handline rope had snapped I wold have fallen.<br />
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I was stuck hanging 10 m deep, with a jammed Gri-Gri in the middle of the desert....Bollocks.<br />
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After trying everything I could to free myself (short of 10 m of vertical pruscking, which might have also jammed up and left me in even more of a tangle) while the group at the top grew understandably more anxious, I had to admit I'd fucked up and shout for a pull. Tying hand and foot loops in the second rope that had been set up I held on tight as 8 of my colleagues hauled me back into the light as I self belayed up my (now-unweighted and free moving) rope in case they dropped me. As they pulled me up the ropes cut into the soft sediment sending down a hail of dirt and stones - thankfully I was wearing a helmet as some of the chunks were big enough to do some damage.<br />
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Because of these unstable side walls it was decided that, rather than modify the technique used to avoid anyone getting stuck and going again, we should abandon the (w)hole idea as it was just too unsafe. I had seen some large rocks in the side walls as I went past and if they had fallen out and hit you at depth you'd be a gonner, helmet or not. So the hole remains unexplored and the depths of the Atacama keep their secrets, for now...<br />
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The failure at the deep hole meant that the only way to sample ancient sediments would be to dig. Much of the week was therefore spent digging, with pickaxe and spade - and on the last day, through harder layers - a jackhammer, and hauling buckets. This was hard, sweaty work, especially in the heat of the midday sun and the intense afternoon winds. A far cry from my usual day-to-day activity in the climate-controlled lab. It didn't take me long to come around to the German's habit of hydrating with 'isotonic' cervezas.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi77BoXOjjEuNLpdIYxmWq4gJY-2ZdaxlQP4BXOn9NtlSD5YL9rKBpyuQkD8JOQv4zwjCGB6bIBPpx3tYuI4L_Lzc90kE9k7E4r0cjaVb3G5sGsZOjMt5k-J3d_tk7HUGfPdEHrM3sBWEM/s1600/29663053_10155685242078843_5115051520396386297_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi77BoXOjjEuNLpdIYxmWq4gJY-2ZdaxlQP4BXOn9NtlSD5YL9rKBpyuQkD8JOQv4zwjCGB6bIBPpx3tYuI4L_Lzc90kE9k7E4r0cjaVb3G5sGsZOjMt5k-J3d_tk7HUGfPdEHrM3sBWEM/s400/29663053_10155685242078843_5115051520396386297_o.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Digging for Science</td></tr>
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By the end of each day we were knackered, we worked until just before sunset so there was enough light to sort out camp and build our fire. We had earned our barbecue and passed pisco around the campfire. Camping in the middle of the desert, we slept under the stars; the Milky way was the brightest I've ever seen it, we saw Jupiter rising, shooting stars, the International Space Station and even Mars.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our view from our sleeping bags each night</td></tr>
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Halfway through the week we had a rest day visiting the Very Large Telescope (VLT). Located on top of a flattened mountain at around 2500 m altitude, this is one of the most powerful telescopes in the world looking at some of the clearest skies. They don't lie, it is Very Large; 4 identical telescopes (each pretty big themselves) which work together collecting light to form a 'virtual telescope' around 130 m across. Before returning to camp, we stopped off back in Antagofasta to wash away the last few days of desert dust by swimming in the Pacific. That felt amazing, but the feeling didn't last long, the dust gets everywhere, I'll be finding it for weeks.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The VLT</td></tr>
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We only really got going with sampling in the last few days due to all of the digging and re-planning required first. Because I am interested in the organic molecules present in the sediments at minute amounts and others are interests in rare microbes, all of the sampling had to be carried out in as clean and sterile a way as possible. This is obviously not easy in the desert, especially when the afternoon winds pick up and you end up running 500 m after your face mask as it disappears into the distance... This was slow going and we were maybe not quite as productive as we had hoped. However, we sampled many interesting sediments which should have a good story to tell.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Sterile' sampling</td></tr>
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I nearly didn't have any samples to bring back at all. After checking my bags and making my way through security in Antagofasta airport I ('Samwell Roy-lay') was called back through security and taken into the back room by a serious looking security guy. The suspicious looking 'powders' wrapped in aluminium foil had unsurprisingly got security excited.<br />
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This is it, I thought, the latex gloves are going on....<br />
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Thankfully, we'd anticipated this and got a letter, explaining what the samples are and why I really don't want to open them in a dirty airport, translated into Spanish (thanks to the magic of Twitter), printed on official looking Imperial College London headed paper, signed and rubber stamped. This literally saved my ass.<br />
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While that is an experience I wouldn't want to repeat, working in the desert was an amazing experience. The geology is like nothing I'd ever seen before and I have a new understanding of how the subsurface may be in the hyper-arid Martian environment. It was great to be finally back in the field after so long stuck in the lab and offroading pickup trucks, sleeping under the stars and sitting late around the campfire with a great bunch of people was pretty awesome too.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Camp under the stars</td></tr>
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Maybe they'll let me go back when I've worked my way through this bunch of samples, best get cracking...Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-4221541587570355962017-12-24T08:04:00.000-08:002017-12-24T08:04:13.015-08:00Latest paper summary: Effect of Hydration State of Martian Perchlorate Salts on Their Decomposition Temperatures<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here’s an early Christmas present for everyone (so both of
you who read this blog), our latest paper (my first out of this project) is now
published online and completely open access for anyone to read. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017JE005381/full">Effect of Hydration States of Martian Perchlorate Salts on their Decomposition Temperatures</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you can’t be bothered to read it, here is a summary:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since the Viking landers back in 1976, numerous missions
have gone to Mars and attempted to find organic matter on the surface. However,
to this date, none have succeeded in finding anything other than simple
chlorinated hydrocarbons. We expect there to be a detectable amount of relatively
complex organic molecules in the Martian near surface from meteoritic input
(meteorites are full of organic matter), hydrothermal processes and maybe even
left behind as evidence of extinct (or, unlikely but not impossible, extant)
life. This lack of detectable organics was always a bit of a mystery…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Note: the presence of organic matter does not necessarily
mean the existence of life, organic molecules are just those which have
carbon and hydrogen and they can be formed by numerous non-biological processes
– including in deep space.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, since they were accidentally discovered by the
Phoenix mission back in 2008 we’ve known that that there are these salts on
Mars called perchlorates. These salts are very rare on Earth, only being known
to exist in significant quantities in the Atacama Desert and the Antarctic Dry
Valleys; two of the driest places on Earth. As the name suggests perchlorates have 4
oxygens to each chlorine ion and so are very highly oxidising. While (relatively)
stable on the Martian surface, as soon as these are heated within the sample
analysis oven of a Martian lander or rover these literally explode, giving off
loads of oxygen into the analytical system (which should be a vacuum). This
means that any organic matter which may be in the Martian soil is combusted,
reacting with the oxygen present and breaking down to carbon dioxide and carbon
monoxide, and the few surviving scraps
are heavily broken up and react with the chlorine in the perchlorate, making small
chlorinated hydrocarbons. Because of this destruction the molecules we are
interested in cannot be detected – This is the perchlorate problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8nCAd2m8iMYwAz2TRITA0fSyeFZFN60iKP9WCf4-QLqWXxoKARMHndEfL2qolG_GS4X-3mgMHRcKhpnv7OoN5pgiMOa-qjaeJYnWugfA_-dOStw_OXGGgEiurbhtmaVDn7z1n8s0vDV8/s1600/Capture2.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="748" data-original-width="1017" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8nCAd2m8iMYwAz2TRITA0fSyeFZFN60iKP9WCf4-QLqWXxoKARMHndEfL2qolG_GS4X-3mgMHRcKhpnv7OoN5pgiMOa-qjaeJYnWugfA_-dOStw_OXGGgEiurbhtmaVDn7z1n8s0vDV8/s400/Capture2.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My attempt to summarise the Perchlorate Problem on the Sketch Your Science wall at AGU this year</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My job as a postdoc researcher at Imperial College is to
attempt to find a way around this ‘perchlorate problem’ by researching how
these perchlorates (and other similar minerals) react with organic matter.
The first step of this, however, is to try to understand a little more about
the Martian perchlorates themselves. And this is what this recently published body of work
was concerned with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since it landed on the Mars in 2012 the Curiosity Rover has drilled 15 holes into the Martian surface and analysed the drilled sample to see what it is made of. One of the techniques used is looking at the gases given off by the sample when it is heated. However, every time the Curiosity Rover has analysed one of these sample
holes, the temperature that oxygen gas is released from the sample is very different (<a href="https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20160002406.pdf">Sutter et al., 2016</a>). Most of the oxygen given off is believed to have come from these perchlorates (based on other gases given off at the same time). It has been found by previous laboratory
experiments that different types of perchlorate salts (magnesium perchlorate,
iron perchlorate, calcium perchlorate, etc) break down and give off oxygen at
different temperatures (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgre.20144/full">Glavin et al., 2015</a>), and also break down at different temperatures depending
on whether other minerals which may act as catalysts are also present in the
soil (<a href="https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140006489.pdf">Sutter et al., 2014</a>). Therefore it has so far been concluded that different types of perchlorates
and/or catalyst minerals have been present at each drill site.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXQ6Ru09bc-1oM319ZtYKeWjcCRDWd7egeyQTpGy2WZ0unLd0akdhjUR7wupoinMU6iaP43YyrmOo6WRQyatNDWwNzPausINKy2s-mN9GuMtWJXulQVYLMexPKOZRFPKi9dzk22jv3RI/s1600/Curisoity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="1024" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsXQ6Ru09bc-1oM319ZtYKeWjcCRDWd7egeyQTpGy2WZ0unLd0akdhjUR7wupoinMU6iaP43YyrmOo6WRQyatNDWwNzPausINKy2s-mN9GuMtWJXulQVYLMexPKOZRFPKi9dzk22jv3RI/s400/Curisoity.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Curiosity on Mars (credit: NASA)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX0lwRNmfZielT3C3v9VaWwAG4AuhzB8VcFmd7lg6dZajKdZ6T78EVGv07yDcdzzYmMuDB7laT2VvD2t2DKcv2UCBhhjWE4zP1-hKusNZr-fOWLsohxXK8EaoQoCPFQsBQgkieASlsMn4/s1600/20161013_curiosity_drill_sites_f840.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="429" data-original-width="840" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX0lwRNmfZielT3C3v9VaWwAG4AuhzB8VcFmd7lg6dZajKdZ6T78EVGv07yDcdzzYmMuDB7laT2VvD2t2DKcv2UCBhhjWE4zP1-hKusNZr-fOWLsohxXK8EaoQoCPFQsBQgkieASlsMn4/s400/20161013_curiosity_drill_sites_f840.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The first 14 drill holes Curiosity drilled on Mars (credit: NASA)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a bit problematic. It is believed that most
perchlorate forms in the Martian atmosphere and falls out onto the surface (as
it does on Earth) and so there is no known mechanism for having different
perchlorates in different places – they should all be pretty much the same
across the Martian surface.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is known that perchlorates are highly hydrophilic – they
will suck up any water available (they are used as drying agents in industry)
and can change their hydration state (how many molecules of water are bound to
each molecule of perchlorate) really easily. The temperature and humidity of
the Martian surface changes massively throughout the Martian day and year. Photographs
taken on Mars by Phoenix show growing blobs on the lander struts which have
been interpreted as perchlorate goos as they absorb water throughout the
Martian day. So, my boss, Mark Sephton, had an idea that the hydration state of
the perchlorates may actually have an important effect on their breakdown
temperature and set me to investigate this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxvOt7x_h4ZdJRi5_kJmh5xXlQUsI_a8FD4Lr0wgb3-NguWc-HPEvRUEi82fLFThuWNsolNwarxyhLdOPmo6rvWnB4O3ZRRXCZ-H0nVrtibxEtgXgx4LOtceqH-eI_3dgoEZrAVS9Ay3E/s1600/MarsWater_1000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="414" data-original-width="1000" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxvOt7x_h4ZdJRi5_kJmh5xXlQUsI_a8FD4Lr0wgb3-NguWc-HPEvRUEi82fLFThuWNsolNwarxyhLdOPmo6rvWnB4O3ZRRXCZ-H0nVrtibxEtgXgx4LOtceqH-eI_3dgoEZrAVS9Ay3E/s400/MarsWater_1000.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Blobs' of perchlorate 'goo' moving across the struts of the Phoenix lander (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JE003362/full">Renno et al., 2009</a>)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I did this by taking a single one of the perchlorate salts
(magnesium perchlorate) and drying it out in the glassware drying oven to drive
off water in an attempt to reduce its hydration state. After three weeks I
removed some sample, flash heated it and analysed the gases given off using
pyrolysis-GCMS at 100 </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">°</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">C temperature steps from 200-1000 </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">°</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">C to create oxygen (and other
lesser gases) release-temperature profiles. A sample of the perchlorate was
also left out on the lab bench to rehydrate and analysed in the same way after
24, 48 and 72 hours of exposure and rehydration. This whole experiment was
repeated after another week and then after a fortnight so oxygen release
profiles were created for 3, 4 and 5 week drying times and corresponding 24, 48
and 72 hour re-exposure samples.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was confirmed that these drying and re-exposure
experiments were definitely changing the hydration states of the perchlorates
by testing them (by X-ray diffraction) next door in the Natural History Museum.
This involved transporting them through crowds of tourists under an inert
atmosphere (in a sealed lunchbox filled with nitrogen gas) to prevent further
hydration state change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What we found was that different hydration states did indeed
affect the temperature of decomposition so that the oxygen release profiles
were as different for different hydration states of this one kind of perchlorate
as the previous studies had found for all the different kinds they tested.
This, therefore, gave a much simpler answer to this puzzle: Curiosity has been analysing
different samples with different hydration states of perchlorate in them. This
makes sense as the different samples drilled have been analysed at different
times of the Martian day and year and samples spend varying amounts of time stashed
inside the temperature-controlled innards of the rover before they get round to
being analysed – which could allow further changes in their hydration state.
Our data show that is it possible for numerous hydration states of perchlorate
to exist within a sample and this leads to multiple peaks in the oxygen release
profile, some of the Martian samples have multiple peaks in their oxygen
release profile and so we suggest that this is due to unstable mixtures of
perchlorate hydration states being present on the Martian surface.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyZ8XP2rNm6MK6TuYCVJjgPypCw-QrauX7mO1z1g1AikGcmIjCXqOX_BnvYmJKA7RUm_sNmAfbUxbJbNezNysAlbqKyiCOMarxZWwE-l1Li1M2QF27wMJbkYMomEik-SBCM0Rh1ymOwBI/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="702" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyZ8XP2rNm6MK6TuYCVJjgPypCw-QrauX7mO1z1g1AikGcmIjCXqOX_BnvYmJKA7RUm_sNmAfbUxbJbNezNysAlbqKyiCOMarxZWwE-l1Li1M2QF27wMJbkYMomEik-SBCM0Rh1ymOwBI/s400/Capture.PNG" width="312" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This figure from the paper shows how the data from this study (A) compares to select samples analysed on Mars by Curiosity (B) and various types of perchlorate from a study by Glavin et al. (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgre.20144/full">2015</a>) (C). It can clearly be seen that the variation in the samples of magnesium perchlorate that were dried out for various numbers of weeks and analysed in this study is almost as great as the variation in different perchlorates from the Glavin et al. study. So, different hydration states may offer a simpler explanation for the variation seen in the Martian samples. </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We tried to see if the oxygen release profile of the Martian
samples (and therefore, based on our findings, the perchlorate hydration state)
corresponded to the climate conditions at the time they were sampled at but did
not find any relationship. There did seem, however, to be a vague suggestion in
the data that they were related to the time of the year that they were sampled
at, although more data would be needed to be sure about this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All in all, we conclude that the hydration state of
perchlorate salts is yet another thing to make making sense of Martian data yet
more complicated.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-74755596226306336432017-12-18T07:16:00.000-08:002017-12-18T07:16:16.682-08:00Science, Sazerac and Steamers: AGU 17, New Orleans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPBvxkHgxsMHtwtrNrCQUZTCvokYYDY6-A13x-mV_5xy_HO4FypX0ziFu0JABZuji_T_kG45Ev6mM_cuvzW5daLU4ev3TBf5Bm4-XFhB3mbkb3rS8WddXuBKUMuXaUwmb8HkmabcZuYfc/s1600/DSC00525.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1600" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPBvxkHgxsMHtwtrNrCQUZTCvokYYDY6-A13x-mV_5xy_HO4FypX0ziFu0JABZuji_T_kG45Ev6mM_cuvzW5daLU4ev3TBf5Bm4-XFhB3mbkb3rS8WddXuBKUMuXaUwmb8HkmabcZuYfc/s640/DSC00525.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After a heavy night with a few of the ex-UEA mountaineering
club members visiting us in The London it was an unpleasant early morning
trudge to the tube station nursing a hangover. With perfect timing it just so
happened that I was flying out on the one day that Hell (sorry, London, nope,
right the first time) froze over. Heavy snow meant minor panic, as all public
transport was buggered and it started to look as though a tube might not turn
up at all. Thankfully it did and it turned out that there was no worry of
missing my flight as it ended up delayed for 3 hours. There was only one
de-icing truck available and it was snowing so heavily that once they’d defrosted
one side of the plane the previous side had re-frozen up and needed doing
again….This, of course, meant I missed my connecting flight which took off 5
minutes before I landed in Atlanta. Luckily, avoiding a repeat of last time
this happened to me, they managed to get me the last seat on the last plane to
New Orleans that evening. Although, from the sound of things, plenty were not
so lucky, airports around the west coast of the US must have been full of
stressed out scientists snuggling up to their poster tubes that night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">AGU was intense, having been to EGU (the European version in
Vienna) during my PhD and thinking that was pretty big, I was expecting
something of a similar scale. I was wrong, it was unfathomably massive. There
were over 25,000 geoscientists in attendance and over 20,000 talks and posters
to see….that is a fuck ton of exciting new scientific research being shared.
The conference centre was over a kilometre long, it took over 20 minutes to get
from one end to the other with all the crowds; thankfully all the Planetary
Science talks were clustered together so I didn’t have to run about much –
although still managed to average about 15,000 steps a day just getting about!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Due to the sheer number of coevally running sessions it was
not possible to see everything I had an interest in (if you’ve read this blog
before you may have noticed I get involved in an eclectic mix of sciences) so I
stuck with the Planetary Science sessions as that’s what I work with at the
moment. Running between talks on Martian surface processes and outer solar system
geochemistry – my main 2 things at the moment. There was some exciting results
being presented from all the current missions that are on the go at the minute
– especially from Mars Curiosity and the recently deceased Cassini probe, so
lots of cool space pictures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bourbon Street in the French Quarter</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I was there to present a poster on our latest paper on the
effects of hydration state on Martian perchlorate salts, about which a summary
blog post will be coming soon once the open access version of the article is
out (you can read the pre-proofed version of the article here, although it is
temporarily pay walled). Unfortunately, despite good intentions of being well
rested and fresh for the 8am session, the night before got pretty heavy. It is
apparently impossible to have a quiet drink in New Orleans and we ended up in a
bar with a pretty cool band drinking Sazeracs (the local speciality cocktail,
laced with absinthe) with random other scientists until the early hours. This
was partly because my mate fancied the band’s singer (oh, shit, I was supposed
to never mention that again) but also because this is what happened EVERY
SINGLE NIGHT. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bourbon Street at night, watching people 'get got'</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As it turns out, an AGU poster session is not the place to
be with an absinthe-derived hangover, they are intense AF. What was cool was
that everyone was super positive about the results and I now have a few things
to try in the lab for future work that have come out of the chats we had. The
argument I was sort of expecting with the research group whose work our work is
directly contradicting never came, which I guess is good as it would probably
have ended with me spewing up on a senior NASA scientists shoes… I did have a
minor fan-girly moment when one of the old professors who’s big on the
Curiosity Rover team came up to collect a copy of our paper though. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">New Orleans is a great locality for a conference, as
somebody who hates being in cities, this is definitely one of the best I’ve
been to. Every evening was spent exploring the French Quarter or the Riverside
area, hanging out in ridiculously cool bars listening to spectacular live music
– lots of Jazz – and drinking great local craft ales and Sazerac. The food was
also amazing, blackened fish, shrimp, deep fried catfish and crawdads, so good,
although I didn’t get round to trying any ‘gator.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Apparently everything that lives in the river/gulf can and will be deep fried</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While really cool, the area does have quite the seedy side
and there were plenty of con-artists out trying to swindle tourists – they must
have seen the conference attendees from a mile off, us scientists are not known
for our street-smarts. The popular scam is offering a shoe shine then betting
the tourist they can tell them exactly where, on what street in which city they
got their shoes. The scam answer being ‘On the bottom of yo’ feet, in this
street’ and then getting all up in their face and calling over their mates if
they don’t hand over the ‘Ten for the shine, and ten for the line’. Must’ve
made a killing this week based on the number of guys getting got we spotted
while sat up on a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street. Also, someone had altered
a pedestrian roadworks diversion to funnel you into a grotty looking strip
club, we noticed we were being herded just in time to avoid this one, sneaky
bastards.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On Wednesday afternoon we skipped out the conference to do
some touristy stuff. The choice was an airboat swamp tour or a paddle steamer
jazz cruise. Sadly at this time of year the alligators would’ve all been hibernating
at the bottom of the swamp, so we opted for the steamer. Best. Idea. Ever.
Cruising down the Mighty Mississippi, seeing the sights, learning a bit of
history from the captain (who had the Louisiana accent ever), listening to jazz
and chilling with a few beers was clearly the highlight of the week.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steaming down the Mississippi</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All in, it was an amazing week; exciting science and great
times, I wonder if Washington will be able to compare next year? Somehow I
doubt it…</span></div>
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Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-67807033282213954242017-11-28T09:18:00.000-08:002017-11-28T09:57:03.723-08:00Adventures in Peer Review or There and Back and Again and Again and Again<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So my latest paper (and my first on Martian geochemistry
rather than corals) is now <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017JE005381/full">online </a>at JGR: Planets in its pre-proof form. I’ll be posting an
easy to understand summary of the science once the finalised article is up in
all of its open access glory but for now, so not to anger our publisher
overlords with potential copyright violations, here is the saga of this paper’s
epic journey through the peer-review process. I'm posting this story as it feels very disparaging getting your submissions that you've worked hard on knocked back, and I think it's good to know that behind many successful publications there is a back story of rejection and so a light at the end of the tunnel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The work for this paper was one of the first projects I
carried out here at Imperial; investigating the relationship between the
hydration state of perchlorate salts and the temperature they decompose at.
This is an important issue as it is believed that the thermal decomposition of
these salts when heated during analysis of Martian soil may be confounding our
attempts to detect organic matter on Mars – but more on that next time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This
work was completed, written up and initially submitted to a well-known
geophysical research journal back in October last year (2016). Unfortunately
despite our research group having published similar themes in their before it
was rejected by the editor for being </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">‘too
specialist’</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. Not to be beaten, the manuscript was quickly reworked to
another geochemical journal’s format and resubmitted. However, they thought it
was </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">‘better for consideration for another
journal</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">’. It seemed salts on Mars weren’t in vogue at the moment – all the
cool geo-astro-bio-chemists-or-whatver-the-hell-I-am-now are researching Enceladus now…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After another round of reformatting (thank fuck for Mendeley
and its instantaneous citation-style-reformatting) and re-registering into
another publisher’s online submission machine we submitted to a more specialist (think space-chemistry not bondage) journal in November (2016). Thankfully, this time there was
no instantaneous letter of rejection from the editor as the manuscript was sent
out for peer review.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To those who don't know, all legitimate scientific work has to be checked over by other experts in the field before it can be released into the wider scientific community. This is the peer-review process and it keeps the amount of bad science out there down to a minimum - or at least it did until you could say whatever you wanted on the internet and people would lap it up and tinfoil hat wearing nutters started having their own journal and <a href="http://fe2017.com/">conferences</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We received two reviews of the paper at the beginning of
February 2017, both reviewers reasonably wanted proof that the perchlorates I
was experimenting on were indeed changing their crystal structure when dehydrated, as I hypothesised, rather than just losing superficial water. They requested, therefore, that we
carried out additional tests on the samples to prove this – by X-Ray
Diffraction (XRD). This was fair enough, it would make our argument much stronger.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Unfortunately we do not have our own XRD machine in the lab,
they’re pretty big, specialist expensive pieces of kit. Also, all of the
samples that I had used had spent much longer either in the drying oven or
exposed to the laboratory atmosphere than they had when I analysed them, this
meant the whole <b>month-and-a-half </b>drying
and subsequent re-exposure experiments had to be repeated on fresh perchlorate.
So, I booked time on the XRD machine next door at the Natural History Museum
and put the samples in the oven for 6 weeks at about gas mark 0.25. The flip
side to this was that I got to go behind-the-scenes at the Natural History
Museum which is always cool – getting a security pass, jumping the queues (it
was half term) and getting let through the mysterious door hidden behind the
giant sloth skeleton, going from the mad noisy crowds to the peace and quiet of
the underground laboratories. However, repeatedly running from our lab, through the
crowds of tourists on Exhibition Road carrying a lunchbox filled with nitrogen
gas to preserve my sample was interesting to say the least.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The guardian of the secret science caves (Image <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiimsXk4uHXAhXHL8AKHfU9ATIQjxwIAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.trover.com%2Fd%2FXuyx-natural-history-museum-london-england&psig=AOvVaw0qZuSSakApbf0pwjWbfOGh&ust=1511975356585079">credit</a>)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While the truth was somewhat more complicated than we had expected,
the XRD data did indeed prove that the conditions we were subjecting the
samples to was enough to change their hydration state. Bolstering our
conclusions that it was changes in hydration state that were affecting the breakdown temperature. The manuscript was updated to include these findings (along with making
many more minor changes suggested by the reviewers) and sent back to review at
the end of March.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Just over a month later the second round of reviews came
back, this time they didn’t agree. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Reviewer One’s was basically, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">‘<i>Ah, I see you did as I asked and it proved your point, nice
work, this should be published</i> 😊’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Reviewer Two on the other hand,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">‘<i>Ah, I see you did as I asked, I still don’t believe it, I
think my idea is the best, <b>REJECTION </b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">😞’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Unfortunately for us, although probably good for scientific
integrity, the Editor has to go with the harshest review and the paper was
rejected by the journal. I thought in this case, however, that this was unfair, after the amount of work I’d
put in to, fulfill everything this reviewer had asked for. As there was such disparity between the two reviews, it felt like they had an axe to grind, maybe they were one of the many that this work
was disagreeing with and didn't like that. Unfortunately, from talking to
people, this seems to happen a lot during the peer-review process, which isn’t cool,
if the work is solid, but doesn't agree with your ideas, then it’s up to you to
prove its wrong with your own research later, not block it from coming out,
that’s how science progresses. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So I sent a whiny letter to the editor, telling on Reviewer
Two for being mean. Surprisingly this worked and the editor promised to send
the paper out to new reviewers IF we made a few concessions and elaborated on why we
didn’t think the alternative hypothesis Reviewer Two washing pushing was
correct.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After some improvements we re-re-submitted at the end of
June, a tense few months followed as we waited to hear what the new reviewers
thought of our work – would they be kind? Thankfully both reviews we received
at the beginning of November were very positive and it only took a few days to
put right the points they made – which were mostly just things needing
re-wording to make more sense/be less ambiguous, or typos that had somehow made
it this far unspotted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Finally on the 16 November 2017, almost exactly a year after
the first submission, the paper was accepted. The battle was over, we had won,
now to wait and see what the wider community thinks…</span><o:p></o:p><br />
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Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-43196398563538883282017-09-15T05:45:00.002-07:002017-09-15T05:45:52.181-07:00Why Cassini had to Die<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This morning, the 15<sup>th</sup> September, after 20 years
in space, Cassini ended her mission exploring the Jovian and Saturnian systems,
intentionally vapourising itself by crashing into the atmosphere of Saturn. Due
to the huge distance they had to be relayed, signals of the data collected right
up until the moment of destruction took several hours to reach Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgA6srkrGjcbJfHtjgjQsAGua72yByJwsvGpahmPCFavWuzI3jhIQM4OwOWdISI2SiYDYLnaLYmXBIpuwWvpAdaa1fFrF0xS8A2lQzgdIJdZiR7HZ75TvlVCPei26dbGREF1GlKq0iKU/s1600/giphy-downsized-large+%25281%2529.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="480" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgA6srkrGjcbJfHtjgjQsAGua72yByJwsvGpahmPCFavWuzI3jhIQM4OwOWdISI2SiYDYLnaLYmXBIpuwWvpAdaa1fFrF0xS8A2lQzgdIJdZiR7HZ75TvlVCPei26dbGREF1GlKq0iKU/s320/giphy-downsized-large+%25281%2529.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artistic visualisation of Cassini starting her final plunge towards Saturn (Credit: NASA)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The death of Cassini was of utmost importance for the
Planetary Protection of the outer solar system (see <a href="http://pposs.org/">PPOSS.org</a>). The more Cassini’s observations
have taught us about the icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter, the more we have
realised just how complex, interesting and important these extraterrestrial
worlds are. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Enceladus, Europa and Ganymede are all now known to contain
vast internal water oceans under a protective icy shell, Titan has a complex
atmosphere full of organic molecules and lakes of hydrocarbons on its surface.
There is a chance that these environments may harbour life or at least have
complex systems of pre-biotic chemistry. In this respect Cassini created more
questions than it answered, creating massive interest in further exploration of
these bodies, with specific life detection missions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdwuxqMYtq2ypmg1F7zP3JdvzRFZ_pZ4ouXkrYXzs7bAY9orcWxTEsUT_PQ6MzFaboz5hcMILjixpEpIiAMgEBFL81DoC1O-kR01VhZnrn5GwaP0Z1J09hb8JK1iky-ymtuGEdIrUE2T4/s1600/enceladusstripes_6962.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="835" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdwuxqMYtq2ypmg1F7zP3JdvzRFZ_pZ4ouXkrYXzs7bAY9orcWxTEsUT_PQ6MzFaboz5hcMILjixpEpIiAMgEBFL81DoC1O-kR01VhZnrn5GwaP0Z1J09hb8JK1iky-ymtuGEdIrUE2T4/s320/enceladusstripes_6962.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmzw7cPxOc6pbT1fMdEknhbGQfTjPSPvijbINWmL6gYE8nzjv5Sq71-Sf0dGqraBe8qDI-UMB0d-kAGwwVC4J_T7y5cQBFRafimWhtyxOXOw_jV2044jCvJIY70BT5s5G_chO8xOC4PZM/s1600/PIA11688.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="977" data-original-width="1580" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmzw7cPxOc6pbT1fMdEknhbGQfTjPSPvijbINWmL6gYE8nzjv5Sq71-Sf0dGqraBe8qDI-UMB0d-kAGwwVC4J_T7y5cQBFRafimWhtyxOXOw_jV2044jCvJIY70BT5s5G_chO8xOC4PZM/s320/PIA11688.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cassini discovered Enceladus has a subsurface ocean and water vapour plumes which contain organic matter and evidence of water-rock interactions - the building blocks and a potential energy source for life (Credit: NASA)</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3xB8HQPyc2joRJh9LTBaDaiT-gJCuYZ_v_0GdgGx8IEd3dyk1uiCI_zTQsPeuz0cDeGrXL4nWfXoSH5dn8BSTWP5-ay4rzmiRMnH2M8hFKqDekMBsFO3_SJAht_Lw6iYqPzmxDiLpqLc/s1600/PIA21615.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1518" data-original-width="1600" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3xB8HQPyc2joRJh9LTBaDaiT-gJCuYZ_v_0GdgGx8IEd3dyk1uiCI_zTQsPeuz0cDeGrXL4nWfXoSH5dn8BSTWP5-ay4rzmiRMnH2M8hFKqDekMBsFO3_SJAht_Lw6iYqPzmxDiLpqLc/s320/PIA21615.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMp0zDlxS2akFQ3ErnGYV1PV_yGGS0y4RI7lP2T4wJ97hLXpZ5fqdrQFZUupob1upRDNiCpTeI6JlZjFI33IdUHTXcnMocA_N_tHAM9jpETiwYiVim0ZQ-bp_uWYsaLDlRjQ5XBrKBiLc/s1600/20120719122501-0_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="770" data-original-width="1000" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMp0zDlxS2akFQ3ErnGYV1PV_yGGS0y4RI7lP2T4wJ97hLXpZ5fqdrQFZUupob1upRDNiCpTeI6JlZjFI33IdUHTXcnMocA_N_tHAM9jpETiwYiVim0ZQ-bp_uWYsaLDlRjQ5XBrKBiLc/s320/20120719122501-0_0.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cassini saw through Titan's thick hazy atmosphere to discover a hugely complex world with hydrocarbon lakes, methane rain and active geology (Credit: NASA)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In order for future missions to study these questions, we
must not contaminate these bodies with terrestrial microbes or organic
contaminants which may accidentally be detected and mistaken for indigenous
alien life. This is where planetary protection comes in. Cassini was dirty, not
having undergone strict contamination control cleaning procedures and so will have
been carrying an unfortunate payload of microbes and organic molecules. If
Cassini had been allowed to continue its orbit around Saturn unchecked, its
orbit could have decayed over time leading to a crash landing on one of the
moons which may have led to uncontainable and irreversible contamination.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cassini’s fiery death therefore saves the pristine conditions
on these fascinating moons for future generations of scientists to explore. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Goodbye Cassini and thankyou</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnl3M82jbLFHpvsYmpWLGY6SF8UDEmzaaGWOnzmC89zKsY6DS5ad_GXnWER-yhdvWTU0pFMaqTyJ0HSwLBASXpS0DJ6f_snyzyFe-gbm458ZpbNvF2X9nTxQRQ_3DzTZvRID8I6p2aR8g/s1600/giphy+%25282%2529.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="480" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnl3M82jbLFHpvsYmpWLGY6SF8UDEmzaaGWOnzmC89zKsY6DS5ad_GXnWER-yhdvWTU0pFMaqTyJ0HSwLBASXpS0DJ6f_snyzyFe-gbm458ZpbNvF2X9nTxQRQ_3DzTZvRID8I6p2aR8g/s320/giphy+%25282%2529.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artistic visualisation of the Cassini's final moments burning up in Saturn's atmosphere (Credit: NASA)</td></tr>
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Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-28184696127502263852017-08-23T07:28:00.002-07:002017-08-23T07:28:59.420-07:003 Days, 3 Rock Types and 100 Million Years: Climbing in Devon<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This (extended) weekend just gone, Dan, one of our regular ex-Norwich climbing
partners, took us on a climbing tour of his home crags in Devon. This was an
excuse for me to look at some nice rocks and we managed to get on three
different rock types, covering over 100 million years of the geological history
of the UK, over the three days. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDsG7IlRmeubcb8cG8eSUsH7v5NBHFLvUN6IhgP5fvR9KtQkjhO73r1LqtznQlW7XTjHlKGJGAIz039RC6SWO6DmKYmGovnRJ2aCQ1Q1-oh12BbO6zLcIqeRx3t3AV-743O14EawatdOg/s1600/Presentation1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDsG7IlRmeubcb8cG8eSUsH7v5NBHFLvUN6IhgP5fvR9KtQkjhO73r1LqtznQlW7XTjHlKGJGAIz039RC6SWO6DmKYmGovnRJ2aCQ1Q1-oh12BbO6zLcIqeRx3t3AV-743O14EawatdOg/s640/Presentation1.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Simplified geological map of Devon showing the three locations (adapted from <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375674216300127">Kirkwood et al., 2016</a>)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Day 1: Baggy Point - Sandstone</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Saturday, starting off at Baggy Point near Croyde. The
climbing here is on the 360-370 million year old, Upper Devonian Baggy
Sandstone Formation. They overlie the Upcott Slates and are themselves overlain
by the Pilton Mudstones, all together a making up a 450m thick succession of
interbedded sands, silts, muds and thin limestones charting a changing river
delta succession which at first built outwards as sea level fell and then
retreated inland as sea level rose again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Due to their age and the pressures and temperatures they
have been subjected to these sandstones are slightly metamorphosed and so are
much harder than more recent sandstone deposits (such as those known to
climbers as the Southern Sandstones around Kent) and so are a lot more solid to
climb on. Routes (such as the classics Lost Horizon and Shangri-Lai) follow
angular fractured cracks up otherwise sheer faces while harder routes tackle
the blank slabs themselves, relying on delicate footwork and careful movement
with little means of protection. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpmcZqY2xnF3Lq37r1Rb38TN4h86Pdpr3Euum_kFBv917pvmCrXnrSj5PjewowoeQFQOWZ6OeTWU4KbkJLPdnTYLqwL_pk-SslRhIgSKI2RVDJ3tbf0IRH1skX_X-TJB02eT0Xoctzu2s/s1600/20953917_10155102333163843_7098226865508373859_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpmcZqY2xnF3Lq37r1Rb38TN4h86Pdpr3Euum_kFBv917pvmCrXnrSj5PjewowoeQFQOWZ6OeTWU4KbkJLPdnTYLqwL_pk-SslRhIgSKI2RVDJ3tbf0IRH1skX_X-TJB02eT0Xoctzu2s/s640/20953917_10155102333163843_7098226865508373859_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rob leading Lost Horizon following a steep crack system</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The sheer faces plunging steeply into the sea that
characterise the climbing here were originally horizontal as the sedimentary
sequence was deposited on the sea bed. However, during the Late Devonian and
Carboniferous Periods these rocks felt the distal effects of the mountain
building event known as the Variscan Orogeny. The continents of Gondwana and
Laurussia collided to form the supercontinent Pangea highly folding and
faulting the rocks as they were compressed together. At Baggy Point this tilted
the sequence very steeply to bring the ancient sea bed to a near vertical
orientation and creating the sheer, almost featureless, delicate slabs which
are a feature of the climbing here.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOdPqbiAmjwxNtJZ1znvK7oKqynhYd_jCO2FIzKCqTTenfaen4Ld4raNbYL3FJ-u4X-igH1kTf7LPt3ytY0Bu3Uo15J0DgF1N8-H7O2E9TyQuMa5PhQgHdVbB_NCbgPjKTViqfNMNyEbs/s1600/20992632_10212117064674715_7947741310790421289_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOdPqbiAmjwxNtJZ1znvK7oKqynhYd_jCO2FIzKCqTTenfaen4Ld4raNbYL3FJ-u4X-igH1kTf7LPt3ytY0Bu3Uo15J0DgF1N8-H7O2E9TyQuMa5PhQgHdVbB_NCbgPjKTViqfNMNyEbs/s640/20992632_10212117064674715_7947741310790421289_n.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dan leading while I belay on the second pitch of a route up one of the steeply dipping slabs at Baggy Point (credit: C. Wade)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unfortunately due to the interbedded weaker muds and the
highly erosive sea cliff environment a lot of the rock here is quite fragile
and we pulled a few dangerous chunks off into the sea as we climbed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Day 2: Daddyhole - Limestone</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sunday, now we’re climbing a little further back in time to
the mid-Devonian at the cliffs of Daddyhole in Torquay. This is very close to
the Devonian type section at Torbay (which I have written about before as part
of the <a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/slapton-part-iii-from-reefs-to-deserts.html">UEA Slapton fieldtrip</a>). The plan was to climb on the lower part of the
sequence at Daddyhole Main Cliff, however, due to the long commiting nature of
the routes down there and the incoming rain we were forced to visit the
uppermost part of the sequence instead at Daddyhole Upper. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mid-Devonian Limestones here were deposited around 400
million years ago when the UK was located within the tropics and Devon was
beneath a warm, shallow, tropical sea. The limestones here represent a sequence
from a thriving offshore reef system, well away from any polluting terrestrial
input, with corals, sponges, shellfish and other organisms being highly
abundant in the fossil record. Overtime (up the sequence/cliff face) the
limestone becomes ‘dirtier’ as more sand and mud reaches the area from the
nearby landmass and the reef life is gradually choked out, a process helped by
nearby volcanoes occasionally burying the reef in ash deposits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrcTFtJCzJwGluTHU4gad_87V-X9AHsppQQHpsBfhe2d-u0E9UclRvkTAcUSXiXmJiqRqWUOOR0soHimGoTnFi1pXzB8vOQHvQapFcq4uaeVZcyu4VNz6DKP-pnglkiF6dwNALVQYAbFo/s1600/20992808_10155102334318843_6350426220155434310_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="528" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrcTFtJCzJwGluTHU4gad_87V-X9AHsppQQHpsBfhe2d-u0E9UclRvkTAcUSXiXmJiqRqWUOOR0soHimGoTnFi1pXzB8vOQHvQapFcq4uaeVZcyu4VNz6DKP-pnglkiF6dwNALVQYAbFo/s640/20992808_10155102334318843_6350426220155434310_n.jpg" width="352" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spot the Dan, he's pretty much at the boundary between the cleaner massively bedded limestones and the siltier, finer bedded sequence above</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The impurity of the limestone and interbedded siltier layers
mean that the climbing at Daddyhole Upper is somewhat ‘esoteric’ with plenty of
loose, crumbly rock and so it is not the most popular venue. This does however
mean it has not taken on the smooth mirror-polished quality of more popular
limestone crags (such as much of the climbing in Portland or Cheddar) and the
combination of weathered out juggy limestone cracks and grippy rock is a rare
delight (as long as you don’t think about how sketchy all the gear placements
are. Unfortunately rain quickly stopped play here and we only got a single
route in before retreating for a seaside Devonshire cream tea.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy3jxDVqDdGG3QSe5wwbqvyrjNVVz94yP4qM-fM9B4V5jBBZjLFuHUhzSy3P2EKSbUeoi-eNFwNr0r41bw0dEDfMvWIkmvu-7HVdC4772dqHrsrmKjezLJaNNf9MGRROVU16qxsjpa7bA/s1600/20994130_10155102334503843_367759616360267905_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy3jxDVqDdGG3QSe5wwbqvyrjNVVz94yP4qM-fM9B4V5jBBZjLFuHUhzSy3P2EKSbUeoi-eNFwNr0r41bw0dEDfMvWIkmvu-7HVdC4772dqHrsrmKjezLJaNNf9MGRROVU16qxsjpa7bA/s640/20994130_10155102334503843_367759616360267905_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charlotte's favourite type of climbing</td></tr>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Day 3: Dartmoor - Granite</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Monday and its back to the future on the granite of
Dartmoor. This is part of the massive Cornubian Batholith (batholith = large
body of magma) that welled up underneath the southwest of England around 300-275
million years ago, during the Late Carboniferous-Early Permian. This outcrops
at various localities all the way from the Isles of Scilly to Dartmoor, but is
known (from a low density gravity anomaly) to extend more than 100 km further southwest
under the sea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The formation of this huge body of molten rock is related to
the same mountain building event as the folding of the Devonian sediments (that
we climbed on the previous two days) it intruded into. Partial melting of the
lower crust occurred at a late stage during the mountain building process
(after the majority of the folding had already occurred) and extension of the
crust allowed the batholith to rise irregularly as ‘blobs’ to higher levels. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over time, the softer sedimentary rocks that were intruded
into have preferentially eroded away, leaving behind these granite ‘blobs’
exposed as Tors on areas such as Dartmoor. As the overlying rocks were removed
the granite was unloaded and expanded, fracturing both horizontally and
vertically and peeling itself apart. This produced the horizontal breaks,
vertical cracks and juggy flake systems that characterise climbing on the Tors
of Dartmoor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6ty_ChKaDIPrSwPU87uBB96CCK5xGrOhThyjOWUiUf7HhJT-CnYDuVroCSuHr3ujLHpwLSTsRrCgN_rR2Z0f95kabUCv1o85vjvsmg9y3jVwhHsu1Wh0Ahnbz_veKsBby05dIaJmV8q8/s1600/20915551_10212117059274580_2004573334076401973_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6ty_ChKaDIPrSwPU87uBB96CCK5xGrOhThyjOWUiUf7HhJT-CnYDuVroCSuHr3ujLHpwLSTsRrCgN_rR2Z0f95kabUCv1o85vjvsmg9y3jVwhHsu1Wh0Ahnbz_veKsBby05dIaJmV8q8/s640/20915551_10212117059274580_2004573334076401973_n.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dan wedging himself in a nice big crack, note the horizontal joints too (credit C. Wade)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Large, sharp phenocrysts (big crystals) of plagioclase stand
out proud from the otherwise surprisingly smooth and slippery blank sections of
granite face. These tell the geologist that the granite cooled in stages, the
big crystals grew slowly at depth before the magma rose upwards to shallower,
cooler levels and finished solidifying quicker so the rest of the crystals (the
groundmass) are much smaller. For the climber, delicate, precise footwork or
desperate crimping and hauling with the fingertips on these small protrusions
is often the only way to make progress on the harder routes. The sharpness of
these crystals tears into the skin restricting the number of attempts you can
have at a hard move before bloody fingers stop play, but gives excellent
friction allowing your climbing shoes to stick to the smallest nubbin.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5tlKmY79NSpE4yKPkhUYKCpcir4ISLFmCEVUP2DP4ZeRnSTs2MHZMvcqOwXsbpc98TKE8uJYep7c1nsNCtXl6Kpq-Y8wEdFefXDeXeBDYfDBA63jBI9yzBXpusH7Xi6qkhBeqmoP4G9Y/s1600/20915590_10212117056194503_6828447701268441431_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5tlKmY79NSpE4yKPkhUYKCpcir4ISLFmCEVUP2DP4ZeRnSTs2MHZMvcqOwXsbpc98TKE8uJYep7c1nsNCtXl6Kpq-Y8wEdFefXDeXeBDYfDBA63jBI9yzBXpusH7Xi6qkhBeqmoP4G9Y/s640/20915590_10212117056194503_6828447701268441431_n.jpg" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me climbing Vandal & Ann, run out and sketched out trying to figure out the best way of using a series of crappy little crystals to get to the safety of the next big break (credit C. Wade)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Clearly in three days it is only possible to scratch the
surface of the number of different rock types and climbing venues available in
the southwest and we will return soon to sample more of their esoteric
delights. Although it’s back onto my favourite Peak Grit for the upcoming bank
holiday weekend.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-6494535371884911602017-08-06T13:49:00.000-07:002017-08-06T13:49:16.547-07:00Mars Sample Return<div class="MsoNormal">
This week I’ve been at a NASA and National Science Academies
hosted planetary protection workshop in Washington DC, representing the
European Science Foundation and the Planetary Protection of the Outer Solar system (<a href="http://pposs.org/pp-101/">PPOSS</a>) team
(everyone important was busy/on holiday). The workshop was focused on planetary
protection for the <span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/" target="_blank">Mars 2020</a>
</span>mission which has an extra element of complication as it is a sample
return mission – well, the 2020 mission is actually a sample caching mission,
they haven’t quite figured out when and how the collected samples will be
returned by a future mission….<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP_O2E35u_MoUOSH36tlfh12NyoqEY3gRex1P3zMJgP-f8Y2lka8mkcfQ6rvjqffvrcri3VGFbmb2tzBTYXNt_26cHTk9yHfd6De6OyAuZ2AhdBqyhZMYocrFVmo9g2DkOQk38B89vcnI/s1600/mars2020-feature-graphic-online3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1076" data-original-width="1400" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP_O2E35u_MoUOSH36tlfh12NyoqEY3gRex1P3zMJgP-f8Y2lka8mkcfQ6rvjqffvrcri3VGFbmb2tzBTYXNt_26cHTk9yHfd6De6OyAuZ2AhdBqyhZMYocrFVmo9g2DkOQk38B89vcnI/s400/mars2020-feature-graphic-online3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mars 2020 Rover (<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/the-2-4-billion-plan-to-steal-a-rock-from-mars-1.21306">nature.com</a>)</td></tr>
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Sample return is a double problem for planetary protection
as we have to worry about both forward and backward contamination. Forward
contamination is an issue for all life detection missions, this is when the
spacecraft is contaminated by hitchhiking microorganisms and organic molecules which
could confound the results of the scientific experiments. This may lead us to
believe we’ve found life on Mars (or wherever we’re visiting) in what is known
as a false positive, or, signals from contaminants could swamp the instruments
so that we miss small crucial signals of extraterrestrial life, or prebiotic
organic molecules (the building blocks of life) – a false negative. Backward contamination
is the worry that a sample return mission may bring back dangerous
microorganisms or other infective agents such as viruses or prions (<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-a-prion-specifica/">what is a prion?</a>).
This is only a concern for sample return missions that bring back material from
localities which are potentially habitable, including certain areas of Mars
which may have just enough water to host microbial life under the surface where
it would be protected from the deadly radiation on the surface (which is why
both Mars 2020 and <span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="http://exploration.esa.int/mars/46048-programme-overview/" target="_blank">ExoMars </a></span>will
have drills for subsurface sampling). <o:p></o:p></div>
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The likelihood of a sample return mission bringing back
something dangerous is incredibly low, we currently have no evidence of life on
Mars (whatever the conspiracy nutjobs <span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/nasa-denies-that-its-running-a-child-slave-colony-on-mars" target="_blank">claim</a></span>). It is unlikely that Martian life would be compatible
with, and therefore able to infect pathogenically, Earth life as it would have
either evolved completely independently or had billions of years since a last
common ancestor. However, despite the low chances, NASA (amongst others) is still
taking this risk very seriously as the consequences of a Martian pathogen could
be catastrophic (think <span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMbSpnlOOtE" target="_blank">Andromeda Strain</a></span>) as no life on Earth would have antibiotic resistance to it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg84ScdPDqwAdmtF-Ca0iNm920n-zrTaQsF7kWGQ_ul33bhwa2_xvP3VoJDswF73BFVWO7XRdoUVhHiSPHgSRUsE2AHb81HeYrcCqvfUahh8wS_1yWwDX6pYZjCT7JLv-lNsSs3R-jsNVY/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg84ScdPDqwAdmtF-Ca0iNm920n-zrTaQsF7kWGQ_ul33bhwa2_xvP3VoJDswF73BFVWO7XRdoUVhHiSPHgSRUsE2AHb81HeYrcCqvfUahh8wS_1yWwDX6pYZjCT7JLv-lNsSs3R-jsNVY/s320/maxresdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Because of this, a large proportion of this meeting was
given over to US governmental policy makers to discuss how the spread of
invasive species are stopped, how disease outbreaks are dealt with and current
biosafety and biosecurity policies and procedures. The overall take home
message from this is that even though there is a lack of data and low chance of
anything dangerous happening, the public will be very concerned about back
contamination and it is public opinion which will force policy change rather
than the science. Because of this we need to get the public interested and on
side, through risk communication and societal participation – such as citizen
science type projects (<span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="https://www.seti.org/node/967" target="_blank">as SETI have done in their search for extraterrestrial signals</a></span>) – to combat
scaremongering groups early on (there is already a <span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="http://www.icamsr.org/" target="_blank">committee against Mars Sample Return </a></span>although they
appear to be currently inactive). It was also made clear that we need an
international input as consequences, however unlikely, would be global.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lessons for preventing backward contamination from Mars
Sample Return can be taken from looking back at how it was dealt with for
Apollo 11, the first mission to bring lunar samples back. As we knew so little
about the moon at that point the astronauts were immediately quarantined on
return and the samples were tested for infectious or toxic agents by exposing a
wide variety of plants and animals to them before they could be released to
labs around the world and the astronauts could be let out (obviously there was
nothing living in the samples as we now know that the moon is a very
inhospitable place).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUH_2fmLFOOGvvjPdfX8XoQBq4M55pQQAFXxYKkVNgRCMU1iOSzbKd6H-tbP17_GIFx6lTCzI7pqD6g-Uq6hho66UYuDhwfG2xmWmKyUn1exY8Yh3OkOQvyNL0J-Qi574k1oqiXDpNJY/s1600/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="600" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUH_2fmLFOOGvvjPdfX8XoQBq4M55pQQAFXxYKkVNgRCMU1iOSzbKd6H-tbP17_GIFx6lTCzI7pqD6g-Uq6hho66UYuDhwfG2xmWmKyUn1exY8Yh3OkOQvyNL0J-Qi574k1oqiXDpNJY/s400/download.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crew of Apollo 11 in quarantine (<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/topics/people/galleries/armstrong_july1969_3.html">NASA</a>)</td></tr>
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Other than this it was interesting to hear a recurring point,
by the presenting scientists, on the Podium principle which was just how much
evidence you need to have gathered to be able to stand up and say ‘Yes, we’ve
found life’. The answer, it seems, is a lot, much more than anyone has found so
far. This principle has not always been followed quite extensively enough. In
the ‘70s, proof for <span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="https://phys.org/news/2016-10-year-old-viking-life-mars.html" target="_blank">life on Mars was claimed</a> </span>(and still is to this day by the lead author) after life
detection experiments carried out by the Viking lander seemed to show an active
metabolism in the Martian soil with nutrients being consumed and carbon dioxide
given off when warmth, water and food were provided. However, the results of
this experiment can be explained more simply by the presence of reactive
oxidising minerals in the soil (such as the <span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgre.20144/full" target="_blank">perchlorates</a> </span>I work on) which we know are
definitely there from other analyses carried out. In the ‘90s structures in the
Alan Hills meteorite were <span style="color: #5b9bd5; mso-themecolor: accent1;"><a href="https://www.space.com/33690-allen-hills-mars-meteorite-alien-life-20-years.html" target="_blank">claimed to be fossilised Martian bacteria</a></span>, although these were later shown to be
abiotic (non-life) mineral structures the study of this meteorite really kicked
off the field of astrobiology as interest in finding alien life was dragged
into mainstream science.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKzU0YfDEdjf_x8_xUAV-g88z8pIVizRvUp9RvuwuNHlwGZRf7pzAPSA9todH6yS4VbA-zIMlcASBXKJ0DeL77Ps4gh1lHgULV6HoUgvHKhMvhjyHGXSJcah9zk565mSp6hxmASxKO_10/s1600/300px-ALH84001_structures.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="205" data-original-width="300" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKzU0YfDEdjf_x8_xUAV-g88z8pIVizRvUp9RvuwuNHlwGZRf7pzAPSA9todH6yS4VbA-zIMlcASBXKJ0DeL77Ps4gh1lHgULV6HoUgvHKhMvhjyHGXSJcah9zk565mSp6hxmASxKO_10/s400/300px-ALH84001_structures.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Structures in the Allan Hills meteorite suggested to be fossil bacteria (NASA)</td></tr>
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Outside of the meeting I had to go visit the Smithsonian Air
and Space Museum to go and look at relics of the Apollo space missions which
collected all of the lunar samples that I have been working on. Putting the
work I do into context with the amount of effort that went into getting these
samples was quite humbling although it was odd to see people queuing up to
touch a tiny polished piece of moon rock when I’ve destroyed a fair amount of
this priceless material. And of course I couldn’t miss a chance to get a selfie
with a life size model of Curiosity!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjztcgL-foHI5JK5zL_DR44tVXXOLrvxnVaPYoff9Un7939RjfuY_0duDE2byJCLXaLn3PfD2Pg_YT82CXAOJH-Rwi8wdMaayHRxWvYYWA5xwpP0P1pXt5jdnGQ3Utuc798VgnD2L-P1Xk/s1600/20676949_10155059632323843_1285384943_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjztcgL-foHI5JK5zL_DR44tVXXOLrvxnVaPYoff9Un7939RjfuY_0duDE2byJCLXaLn3PfD2Pg_YT82CXAOJH-Rwi8wdMaayHRxWvYYWA5xwpP0P1pXt5jdnGQ3Utuc798VgnD2L-P1Xk/s400/20676949_10155059632323843_1285384943_o.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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Unfortunately the trip hasn’t gone completely smoothly as
I’m writing this whilst stuck in Detroit airport where I spent last night
sleeping (well attempting to) under a bench after I missed my connecting flight
home to London thanks to storms delaying my flight leaving DC. So I’ll be
spending 17 hours in Detroit airport before flying over to Boston to connect to
Heathrow and getting home a day later than planned – fun times. <o:p></o:p></div>
Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-39689607323629730982016-12-19T08:28:00.002-08:002016-12-19T08:28:27.482-08:00Planetary Protection of the Outer Solar System workshop<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5NrfFn5nPzRm8LEBOFSTKtDZa7WmK4QZ_q_aTsCjH6qfdouD4kT12KYsT7l0yayjOrFf4NKb_iY1pRsuIP5PDTxaK8iyF7yC4Jir8Dk8eUG7bK82CK2kNWoXPGOgPVF4H05bQrp4y-6A/s1600/PPOSS.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5NrfFn5nPzRm8LEBOFSTKtDZa7WmK4QZ_q_aTsCjH6qfdouD4kT12KYsT7l0yayjOrFf4NKb_iY1pRsuIP5PDTxaK8iyF7yC4Jir8Dk8eUG7bK82CK2kNWoXPGOgPVF4H05bQrp4y-6A/s400/PPOSS.PNG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">PPOSS logo (www.pposs.org)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I started writing this post on the flight home from a few days in Cologne
at a Planetary Protection of the Outer Solar System (</span><a href="http://pposs.org/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">PPOSS</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) workshop. The PPOSS
project is a EU led international collaboration of academics and industry
working toward a code of best practice for planetary protection for future
space missions to the bodies of the outer solar system – such as the icy moons
of Jupiter and Saturn and asteroids.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Planetary Protection (PP) encompasses
our attempts to minimise the chances of contaminating another world with
microbes (biological contamination) or organic matter (organic contamination).
This is important as if microbes survived the journey through space (which
experiments have shown to be possible) and the destination proved habitable for
them, then they could colonise. This is bad for two reasons; the current or future development of any indigenous life could be affected and the scientific integrity of the results of future missions would be compromised. Even if just dead microbes or non-biological organic matter are transported to the study locality then the results of experiments would still be contaminated leading to false positives and masking
the detection of indigenous molecules or life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To avoid this forward contamination a lot of effort has to
go into building landers in sterile environments, making sure they are clean to strict requirements and ensuring that the orbits of orbiters and flyby
missions are such that they will not impact areas of interest. The level of PP necessary increases with the potential habitability of the body of interest, for example our moon and small, dry asteroids have much lower requirements than Europa and Enceladus - which are both now believed to contain significant amounts of liquid water (a prerequisite of all known life). Backwards contamination is also a theoretical problem to avoid. This is where extraterrestrial microbes are brought back to Earth by a sample return mission - raising the possibility of infecting our planet with alien life. And procedures must be put into place to quarantine samples because of this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6dV7ueQerjmpYLTW6scA5I-Qrc3GiPazPb_iDkRlMf4BLjleGqYwOPyKbvDMOgeI_sgzAiZHdend_C7w4Em0HWROLSOt4CrkCoFnlw1KHiA8aWB86immSs3FtaNAC-Ew1IhGzch0sBE/s1600/enceladusstripes_6962.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6dV7ueQerjmpYLTW6scA5I-Qrc3GiPazPb_iDkRlMf4BLjleGqYwOPyKbvDMOgeI_sgzAiZHdend_C7w4Em0HWROLSOt4CrkCoFnlw1KHiA8aWB86immSs3FtaNAC-Ew1IhGzch0sBE/s400/enceladusstripes_6962.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Enceladus is a high risk for forward contamination due to the presence of large amounts of liquid water (image: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/enceladus)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Imperial’s contribution (and my involvement) to this project is the writing of a chapter on‘Best
practice of Organic Contamination Control’ as part of a handbook aimed at those working in space science and industry. This chapter will summarise the challenges
involved in keeping the icy moons free from terrestrial organic (including biological) contamination and what lessons we
can take (and adapt) from the planetary protection of Mars over the last 40-odd
years. This is what my supervisor and myself have been working on for the last
few months and was presented at the workshop.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This 2 day workshop at The German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne was to get everyone involved in the project together to thrash out a proper structure to the handbook and discuss what had
already been done. Participants included representatives from the European
Science Foundation (<a href="http://www.esf.org/" target="_blank">ESF </a>- who are leading the project); the Commitee of Space Research (<a href="https://cosparhq.cnes.fr/" target="_blank">COSPAR</a>); the German (<a href="http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10002/" target="_blank">DLR</a>), Italian (<a href="http://www.inaf.it/en" target="_blank">INAF</a>), Chinese (<a href="http://www.cast.cn/item/list.asp?id=1561" target="_blank">CAST</a>), Japanese (<a href="http://global.jaxa.jp/" target="_blank">JAXA</a>), American (<a href="http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/index.htm" target="_blank">SSB</a>) national aerospace organisations and private aerospace industries. All with varied experience and opinions on planetary protection of various past and
current missions (some of whom have been involved with PP since the first missions to Mars in the '60s and '70s).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was a productive couple of days with many issues being
cleared up by the panel, mostly to do with things being done ever so slightly
differently or having different names in Europe and the US. It does look,
however, that our chapter is going to need a major rewrite to get everything in
that all the partners want. We may have to visit some of the European space missions
that are currently being built, (such as <a href="http://www.mps.mpg.de/planetary-science/exomars-moma" target="_blank">MOMA</a>, due to fly on ExoMars 2020) to sort out some case
studies for inclusion (it’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I tacked an extra day in Cologne onto the end of the
workshop as I’d never visited Germany before and it coincided with the Christmas
markets being in full swing. The Christmas markets are very impressive and even I couldn't help to feel festive as they pervade the whole city with Christmas music, gl</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0.32px;">ü</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">whein and the smell of
grilling bratwürst. I was shown around by Honza who also did his PhD at the University of East Anglia and is
now doing a post doc in Cologne. A trip to a Bier Museum and the sampling of many of the local (very good) specialty</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> beers resulted in a cracking hangover for the flight home.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieolHzeACytnJOVSeVQ0al_uF2jNtnbs594N7w86rOU6tt43dMwQ5PVhe3JJGR4pEHTjyq-vfEsPFPDGGj54kGPrkeMgovXJO4lupP_xfvhfYUrz_uUlDByvp4USpp56sk22IWeolXxEA/s1600/20161215_165051.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieolHzeACytnJOVSeVQ0al_uF2jNtnbs594N7w86rOU6tt43dMwQ5PVhe3JJGR4pEHTjyq-vfEsPFPDGGj54kGPrkeMgovXJO4lupP_xfvhfYUrz_uUlDByvp4USpp56sk22IWeolXxEA/s400/20161215_165051.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unfortunately now I'm back in the lab and somehow the pyrolysis unit has developed a leak while I've been away................Merry Christmas!</span></div>
Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-23722509311717046902016-09-29T09:42:00.002-07:002016-09-29T09:42:16.740-07:00Mars by numbers<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">At the moment my current task at work is to wade through masses of data
collected and sent back down by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) on the
Curiosity Rover and try to figure out some of what’s going on up there and how
it relates to our project (which I can’t talk about yet as we’re trying to get
it published). </span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_feature/public/thumbnails/image/pia19807_flat-horizon-monday.jpg?itok=DrNYLJWs" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_feature/public/thumbnails/image/pia19807_flat-horizon-monday.jpg?itok=DrNYLJWs" height="238" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of Curiosity's selfies taken at Mount Sharp (<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/pia19807/curiosity-low-angle-self-portrait-at-buckskin-drilling-site-on-mount-sharp" target="_blank">from NASA</a>) </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All of the data collected by the various instruments on Mar’s
chemistry, climate, geology, etc are freely accessible to anyone. So far there are nearly 1130 sol’s (Martian day’s) worth of data,
with hundreds of different experiments carried out over that period. That’s a
lot to get through! Although so far I’ve only really been looking at a particular
kind of geochemical analysis technique (again, can’t say which) but there is so
much more, some of which nobodies probably had the time to properly look at
yet. All of the big released photos of the Martian landscape are actually stitched together from many smaller shots taken by Curiosity and they are also all available to download in high resolution.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">What I have been able to do is plot daily climate conditions from the Rover's weather
station' to look at the changes in temperature
and humidity over the Martian sol. This is a plot of the weather on the 183 sol since curiosity landed on Mars.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBrcvjuZ94sOUpyOnpDVLVdcmDO1DF3DNG03gI35FqXmB-Vvpo6qZrHSFOm_Cm2sNHqLWZzmDmkX4TEOR-wE9HjsJwwwKvPXlfwV8a2fJIvt0dmXZuuTOCGDqyPD1VA2i3HhX7jwV-J4/s1600/Mars+weather.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBrcvjuZ94sOUpyOnpDVLVdcmDO1DF3DNG03gI35FqXmB-Vvpo6qZrHSFOm_Cm2sNHqLWZzmDmkX4TEOR-wE9HjsJwwwKvPXlfwV8a2fJIvt0dmXZuuTOCGDqyPD1VA2i3HhX7jwV-J4/s400/Mars+weather.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The nighttime temperatures going down to -70 C are not far off the coldest temperatures ever recorded at Earth's South Pole (around -80 C), however, this is a pretty typical Spring day near the Equator of Mars (Curiosity's landing site, Gale Crater, is 4.6 degrees south). And with daytime temperatures close to 0 C this is a huge range throughout the day.The measured relative humidities (RH) are much lower than the driest place on Earth, the Atacama desert, where the most arid parts have an average RH of around 17 %. However, Curiosity has recorded nighttime Winter RH values of up to 70 %, high enough for frost to form, showing the wide range of potential conditions at the landing site.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With all this available data online you've got to wonder how all the people who are convinced that NASA is hiding evidence of aliens on Mars still believe that. Surely it'd be a lot easier to just not bother 'faking' sending a Rover up and then have to then make up this huge amount of data? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I think it’s pretty cool that anybody
can download and play about with data that’s cost billions to produce and has
been created over 30 million miles away on another planet. Delving into this
resource is the closest most (if not all) of us will get to exploring another
world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Links:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://geo.pds.nasa.gov/missions/msl/index.htm" target="_blank"> MSL node site(horrible to look at and find things until you get the hang of it)</a></span></div>
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<a href="https://an.rsl.wustl.edu/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Curiosity Analysts Notebook (prettier and easier to use but doesn’t have all the data)</span><o:p></o:p></a><br />
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Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-29763485373854518622016-09-02T11:39:00.001-07:002016-09-02T11:39:41.573-07:00Climbing and Cleavage - the geological history of the Llanberis Slate Quarries<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So after just two trips to the Llanberis slate quarries of
North Wales I am now a fully converted Slate Head. The sharp crimps, invisible
micro-edges and frictionless slopers create a completely different climbing experience
to any other rock type; with precision, balance and feet-up-by-your-face flexibility
being much more important than pure strength and power. Routes are varied,
balancing their way up apparently slick vertical slabs, bridging up awkward
technical grooves, jamming thin micro-wire protected seams and even powering
through overhanging series of roofs - keeping things interesting.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisL8unGHaj98f8auRYb-x5FZ2S3Cgr90LRXtcVK7U1hk1yty25PBD6wy4dAgU6rRM7CxGxNFja8TIpphde13j8-y7XNiPZKk0qecruYYWlL6EsT7CzJkvLlOwZ1wA1OV03mrE_NgLjCQg/s1600/Panorama+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisL8unGHaj98f8auRYb-x5FZ2S3Cgr90LRXtcVK7U1hk1yty25PBD6wy4dAgU6rRM7CxGxNFja8TIpphde13j8-y7XNiPZKk0qecruYYWlL6EsT7CzJkvLlOwZ1wA1OV03mrE_NgLjCQg/s400/Panorama+1.JPG" width="377" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Dinorwic Quarry, Australia area</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">But what is it that makes this rock behave the way it does,
creating the contrast between those sharp edges and featureless, smooth faces?
The slate is old and has experienced numerous events of geological upheaval to
get to how it is today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Originally fine particles fell out of suspension to form a
fine mud at the bottom of an ocean basin, the Welsh Basin, slowly building up,
resulting in thick deposits over millions of years. This was back in the
Cambrian Period (named after Wales, Cymru) around 540 - 490 million years ago
(the slates further south around Blenau Festiniog were deposited a few hundred
million years later in the Ordovician). At this time the microcontinent of
Avalonia (what was to become Wales and England) was on the southern edge of a
large ocean, the Iapetus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Welsh Basin was a back arc depositional basin, an
area of extension and subsidence behind a volcanic arc, created due to the subduction of the
Iapetus Ocean beneath Avalonia. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtFt3TGR4vf7AKnMtS4fmbO_l5qZW8RyvAnoFZ6s8GxgJwDLWJYZsNDPRjvF3NrfougPhzoE4nxmFI5iGO_BhWmtE4m9OoH-yJVzQymk8C02-twlEGvQ3Oni9pQaSjx4EE89shcw6-O8Q/s1600/Back+arc+bASIN.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtFt3TGR4vf7AKnMtS4fmbO_l5qZW8RyvAnoFZ6s8GxgJwDLWJYZsNDPRjvF3NrfougPhzoE4nxmFI5iGO_BhWmtE4m9OoH-yJVzQymk8C02-twlEGvQ3Oni9pQaSjx4EE89shcw6-O8Q/s400/Back+arc+bASIN.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Deposition in the Welsh Basin in a back-arc setting</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With the closure of the Iapetus, the Northern and Southern
halves of the British Isles were pushed together in the Caledonian Orogeny
through the Ordovician to Devonian times (ending around 390 million years ago).
This impact formed the mountain belts of northern Wales, Scotland and the north
of England (which would then have been much larger than today), compressing,
folding and faulting the rocks of the Welsh Basin, subjecting them to high
directional pressures. This directional pressure (or stress) caused the low
grade metamorphism of the mudrocks, leading to realignment and recrystallization
of platy (flat) clay minerals (micas) and forming the slates. It is this
alignment of minerals which causes slates to cleave along planes of weakness in
one direction. This cleavage is what made the slates perfect for use as roofing
tiles and creates the sharp edges and smooth faces we see today on the rock.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slate formation: (1) Deposition of fine platy-clay minerals in a low energy marine setting; (2) Compression during mountain building event realigns the platy minerals perpendicular to the direction of applied pressure; (3) Planes of weakness are created which the slate cleaves along </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Fast forward nearly 400 million years and the Llanberis
slate quarries were mined for hundreds of years, getting deeper and deeper into
the earth and creating the stepped layers of exposed rock walls we can now
explore. </span></div>
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Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-26480439875538936822016-07-25T03:31:00.001-07:002016-11-30T00:56:37.824-08:00Graduation: The end of an era<div class="MsoNormal">
On Thursday I finally graduated from my PhD. That was it,
over, bringing a definitive end to my time at UEA after almost 5 years. This
was just a formality, the ‘certificate’ I was handed on stage was just a blank
piece of paper and the ‘scroll’ in my photos is nothing more than a bit of
plastic drainpipe; I’d had the real certificate sent to me months before.
However, it felt important to go and bring this final stage of my education to
a marked conclusion, going along with all the (somewhat ridiculous) pomp and
circumstance a 53 year old university can muster. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Returning to Norfolk after a few months in London felt like
coming home; the walk through the quiet, green surroundings of the campus much
more pleasant than my current daily death-cycle commute through west London. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The hot summer’s day meant the full PhD robes and suit were
unwelcome, but thankfully the old sports hall was air conditioned and the
ceremony was relatively short. After a few speeches, a quick walk across the
stage and a handshake, it was all over. That was it, my link to UEA had been
severed, and it was time to look ahead to the next stage of my career (see my
<a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/is-there-life-on-mars.html" target="_blank">last post</a>).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The blur is me, honest</td></tr>
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Photographs were taken with my colleagues of the last few
years, the ‘Lobster Room’ office had almost all managed to go through the whole
process and graduate together - the remainder of us refused to be separated for
the group photos. There were, however, a few surprises as to who had and had
not succeeded; the PhD process is not without its casualties and last minute
triumphs.</div>
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After that, it was a race to lose the robes and get down t’pub
for an evening in one of the best beer gardens in Norwich to discuss the highs
and lows of our time at UEA and find out how everybody is doing now – mostly very
well thankfully.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Despite media reports, UEA has not banned the throwing of hats</td></tr>
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Charlotte and I stayed in Norwich for a long weekend doing everything
we missed: drinking with old mountaineering club buddies, hanging out at the
climbing wall where we used to work, getting sunburnt on the beach at
Wells-next-the-Sea and exploring Thetford forest. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Norfolk might be quiet, out of the way and slow paced, but
it is very pleasant. We’re going to miss it.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just chilling with some ducks in the woods - sort of sums up Norfolk really</td></tr>
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Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3028118665810162834.post-86223080909136483232016-06-28T02:21:00.001-07:002016-11-30T01:39:13.808-08:00Is there Life on Mars?<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">OK, so despite all the doom and gloom of my last but one
post (<a href="http://confusedgeologist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/interviewing-very-confused-geologist.html" target="_blank">here</a>), I have now been working at Imperial College London for the last
week. We have finally escaped Norfolk, breaking the ‘If you stay for 5 years,
you stay forever’ rule. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I’m employed as a ‘Research Associate in Organic Matter and
Minerals of Mars’, my job is to look for ways to improve our chances of
detecting organic matter for future Mars lander missions. Put simply, I’m
helping to LOOK FOR LIFE ON MARS (cue some Bowie)!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To sum up the problem I’ll be working on, as I understand it
so far (remember, I’m not a chemist): Mars landers have not yet discovered conclusive
evidence of organic matter (note: organic matter does not necessarily mean
biological matter, they are compounds containing carbon and usually C-H and/or
C-C bonds) but have found evidence of a group of minerals called perchlorates
(ClO<sub>4</sub>) being pretty ubiquitous in Martian lake sediments (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgre.20144/abstract" target="_blank">e.g. Glavin et al., 2013</a>). These
sediments are also the places we would expect to find evidence of organic
matter, through its concentration by fluvial and lacustrine sedimentation
processes. We know that there should be a measurable concentration of organics
delivered to the Martian surface by meteorites and certain compounds could
indicate evidence of past or current alien life, but nothing has been found so
far. We believe that it is the presence of perchlorate that is currently
blocking the positive identification of organic matter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Analysis of Martian sediments for organics is carried out by
pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS). The sample is heated
in the absence of oxygen to break down large molecules into smaller ones which
can be separated by gas chromatography and detected by mass spectrometry, the
products tell us what the big molecules originally were. The issue here is,
perchlorate is strongly oxidising; it is a bleach. When it is heated in the pyrolysis
unit as part of the sample, it breaks down releasing oxygen and chlorine. The
presence of oxygen causes any organic matter present to combust, being lost as
carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and water. With everything breaking down and
combusting, we do not detect either the organic matter or the perchlorate by
this method – so it took a long time for anyone to even realise there was a
problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Along with the rest of the research group, I now have to
figure out a way to make this less of a problem, hopefully in time for <a href="http://exploration.esa.int/mars/48088-mission-overview/" target="_blank">ExoMars2020</a>…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So far I’ve been reading up on the last 40 years of
geochemical analysis on Mars trying to get my head around the problem and
understand a bit of the chemistry, which is fun as I haven’t done any organic
geochemistry since my Masters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On Friday I got sent to an outreach event across the road at
the Royal Albert Hall, showing kids some bits of actual Martian meteorite and
talking about the various ages of Mars, using Earth analogue rocks to
demonstrate the strata which were laid down during each period. However, the
guy next to us who’d brought a replica space suit to try on proved more popular
for some reason. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our group's display</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This was all part of a big school event which culminated in
the Royal Philharmonic playing the planets, which was a pretty cool way to
spend a Friday afternoon. It was good to hear that I am studying the planet with
the best soundtrack.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Next week I’ll actually get to grips with the machine I’ll
be mostly working on (the Py-GCMS) and will be thrown in at the deep end
analysing irreplaceable Apollo 17 moon rocks, so let’s see how that goes…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I think this project is going to be a bit more interesting
than the snails…</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Sam Roylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05332934504944172271noreply@blogger.com0