igneous rocks are surrounded by brines tagged posts

This is a mosaic image of Mars created from over 100 images taken by Viking Orbiters in the 1970s.
Credit: NASA

A similar process could occur anywhere that igneous rocks are surrounded by brines, including the subsurface oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Mars’ organic carbon may have originated from a series of electrochemical reactions between briny liquids and volcanic minerals, according to new analyses of three Martian meteorites from a team led by Carnegie’s Andrew Steele published in Science Advances.

The group’s analysis of a trio of Martian meteorites that fell to Earth – Tissint, Nakhla, and NWA 1950 – showed that they contain an inventory of organic carbon that is remarkably consistent with the organic carbon compounds detected by the Mars Science Labora...