Mars Makes Two
It turns out that studying rocks here on Earth sets you up quite nicely for studying rocks from Mars. That’s what Woody Fischer is doing, and a talk with him took me to some pretty mind-blowing places. “Mind-blowing,” as in one point of this story is that new knowledge about Mars is throwing into disarray a number of formerly well-established ideas.
There was no room for this, but the emerging picture from Mars’ rock record seems to run counter to certain concepts about how our sun evolved. If it was dimmer billions of years ago, how was ancient Mars so warm and wet? The answer is yet to come.
Anyway, it all adds up to an exciting moment in science for folks like Woody Fischer. I look forward to learning more as they figure this stuff out …
—Wayne
