Mars’ primary crust formation tagged posts

This image montage taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the surface of planet Mars, which researchers believe hardened only 20 million years after the birth of the Sun, much earlier than first thought

The crust that encases rocky planets and makes possible the emergence of life took shape on Mars earlier than thought and at least 100 million years sooner than on Earth, researchers said Wednesday. Analysing grains of the mineral zircon extracted from a Martian meteorite known as Black Beauty, they determined that the Red Planet’s outer layer hardened 4.547 billion years ago, only 20 million years after the birth of the Sun.

“Mars’s primary crust formation—which is the end product of planet formation—happened much faster than previously thought,” said Martin Bizzarro, a scientist at Denmark...