When it comes to "Mars colonization", many people feel unreliable, which is simply a fool's dream, but with the rapid progress of human science and technology, I believe that one day the dream of "Mars colonization" will be realized, just like the Chinese space station, decades ago, who would have thought that China could even build such a tall space station!
Today, there are three rovers on Mars, China Zhurong, American Perseverance and Curiosity, which can be said to be the "forerunners" of human colonization of Mars, and everyone hopes that they can find something on the surface of Mars, materials related to extraterrestrial life, and materials that support human survival on Mars, which will make people excited.
Among the three rovers, Curiosity is an old rover that has been exploring the Gale crater for 9 years, has walked 27.01 kilometers, taken more than 870,000 Martian landscape photos, and scientists have generated 3D maps based on these Mars landscape photos, as if they were personally in gaelic impact craters.
Curiosity discovered unusual mixtures, assuming the existence of extraterrestrial life
Curiosity rover is very powerful, unaffected by Martian storms, during the 27.01 km long journey, there were many discoveries, and just in January 2022, American scientists announced again: Curiosity rover in gale impact crater has a big discovery, found an unusual mixture of chemical elements.
According to NASA experts, this mixture of chemical elements can be assumed to exist in extraterrestrial life, so let's see what kind of material it is, which is a mixture of carbon-12 and carbon-13 isotopes, carbon-12 and carbon-13 are two stable substances, and carbon-13 is extremely poor.
To collect these mixtures of chemical elements, Curiosity explored for nine full years, starting in August 2012 and ending in July 2021, heating a total of 24 powdered samples and isolating individual chemicals before discovering the carbon-12 and carbon-13 isotope mixtures.
How did carbon-12 and carbon-13 on Mars come about?
Carbon-12 and carbon-13 are very primitive substances that already existed in the universe before the solar system was formed, so how did carbon-12 and carbon-13 on Mars come about? Three possibilities proposed by American experts, cosmic dust clouds, formaldehyde and other organic compounds and biological activity are produced.
Cosmic dust clouds
Every few hundred million years, the solar system passes through a large galactic molecular cloud, which reduces the temperature on Mars, so the Martian ocean is frozen into a glacier, so the carbon dust in the molecular cloud is first deposited on top of the ice, and the Martian glacier disappears, leaving a layer of carbon-containing dirt in the Martian soil.
Formaldehyde and other organic compounds
Carbon dioxide is converted into organic compounds such as formaldehyde after being irradiated by ultraviolet light, and organic compounds contain carbon, which has become an explanation for the source of martian carbon because the experimental results prove this result.
Biological activity arises
Extremely depleted carbon-13 on Mars is very similar to the samples extracted from Australian sediments, which are 2.7 billion years old, and extremely depleted carbon-13 is caused by biological activity when ancient microorganisms consumed methane, which means that the extreme depletion of carbon-13 on Earth is produced by life, so the depleted carbon-13 on Mars may also come from life.
To be clear, this does not necessarily mean that the extremely depleted carbon-13 on Mars was also produced by extraterrestrial life and can only be used as a possible hypothesis.
At last
Curiosity is powered by a nuclear battery, very durable, as long as there is no failure, there is no problem in walking for another 10 years and 20 years, but curiosity is the most vulnerable place is its wheels, multiple photos show that the wheels broke a number of large holes, once the wheels are broken, there is no use for nuclear batteries.
Gayle Crater is 154 kilometers in diameter, Curiosity mainly explores the Gale Crater on Mars, and the final destination of the trip is the center of Gale Crater, but the center is at least 50 kilometers away from Curiosity, at the current speed, I am afraid it will take another 20 years. Interesting and informative scientific content, please pay attention to the only WeChat public account: Interesting Exploration