Land of Gregs

A followup to my previous blog post. Apparently, the news from Mars that was going to be “one for the history books” was a big misunderstanding between the NASA scientist and the Slate interviewer. NASA have confirmed that they haven’t found organics. What they have found is volcanic sand, the mineral makeup of which has been compared to the sand on the volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii. This is interesting in itself, but not as exciting as we hoped. We’re still at the beginning of Curiosity’s mission, so we can hope for more news in the future.

MESSENGER approaching Mercury (Credit: NASA)

On the other hand, this news has been trumped by some news from the MESSENGER probe that is orbiting Mercury. This has found not only organics, but ice as well! On a planet that experiences temperatures more than 400 degrees celcius this is surprising, but it appears that the craters offer enough shade. The other interesting thing to note is that the organics are covering the ice, which means they were probably deposited by comets. Their proximity could imply that life may exist under the ice, but there’s not enough information as of yet. This could prove to be an unexpected one for the history books.