He's not quite looking for Martians, but the Daily Lobo was intrigued enough to ask Horton Newsom, research professor at UNM's Institute of Meteoritics, about his research dealing with the red planet. Newsom is on the team of scientists that will launch the next Mars rover in 2012.
Daily Lobo: So, tell me a little bit about your research.
Horton Newsom: I'm studying Mars. I'm interested in where we might find life on Mars, and also information about impact craters, which could be an environment where life might form on Mars.
DL: How would life form in the craters?
HN: Really large impact craters could form lakes and can also have hydrothermal systems - hot water, basically - which is where we think life may have originated on Earth, so we want to look for those kinds of environments on Mars. The exciting thing is I'm a science team member on the next Mars rover mission at the Mars Science Laboratory. The rover will be the size of a small car.. It's going to be nuclear-powered as well.. It's going to fire a laser beam that will actually vaporize rocks and will find visual chemical composition, so we'll be able to analyze many rocks. We don't even have to reach out with an arm to do that. What we can see, we can analyze.
DL: What are some of the interesting things you have been able to find or learn about Mars through your research?
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HN: One of the big things is the discovery that Mars really has had water flowing across the surface in the past in the form of lakes and rivers. I've been involved with the landing site selection process for the Mars Science Laboratory, but also for the Mars exploration rover. We are looking for places to explore on Mars, where we could find the best place to look for environments where life may have originated or actually have accumulated evidence, so these environments include lake deposits, hydrothermal deposits.. One of the interesting things is that if we find life on Mars, it's possible it could have come from the Earth, and likewise it's possible that life may have originated on Mars and then transported to Earth early in its history, because large-impact craters knock rocks off the planets and then travel. We have lots of meteorites from Mars, and Mars presumably has rocks that were knocked off the Earth and traveled to Mars. I think that the best chance is that life was transported from Earth to Mars as part of meteorites. And so if we find life on Mars, part of the problem is going to be how do . you know it evolved on Mars versus was it transported from the Earth?
DL: What got you interested in Mars?
HN: It's exciting, and in some ways it's the most Earth-like planet. It had exciting history with water, giant volcanoes, and they're all there for us to explore now. On the Earth, a lot of these features are removed by erosion, but one of the things I do is go out and study features on the Earth, especially impact craters, to learn more about how these work, how they form, and then apply some of that knowledge to Mars.
~Abigail Ramirez
