A little bit of Mars on Earth.Sending rovers on a 500-million-kilometer journey to explore the Martian landscape isn't the only way to uncover the history of the Red Planet. Chunks of rock that have been chipped from Mars by ancient impacts and then pulled to Earth by our planet's gravity provide planetary scientists with rare and inexpensive opportunities to investigate the Red Planet's past. To date, researchers have studied about 24 martian meteorites Meteorites See also astronomy. aerolithology the science of aerolites, whether meteoric stones or meteorites. Also called aerolitics. astrolithology the study of meteorites. Also called meteoritics. . The latest addition to this exclusive club was uncovered on Dec. 15, 2003, on an ice field in the Transantarctic Mountains Transantarctic Mountains, mountain chain stretching across Antarctica from Victoria Land to Coats Land; separating the E Antarctic and W Antarctic subcontinents. Mt. Markham (14,275 ft/4,351 m high), near the Ross Ice Shelf, is the highest peak. , about 750 kilometers from the South Pole South Pole, southern end of the earth's axis, lat. 90° S. It is distinguished from the south magnetic pole. The South Pole was reached by Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, in 1911. See Antarctica. . Designated MIL03346, the 715.2-gram black rock has the mineral composition, texture and isotope content of rocks from Mars, say scientists at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History For the museum in Manhattan, see . This article is about the museum in Washington, D.C.. For other uses, see National Museum of Natural History (disambiguation). The National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Details of the find have been posted on a special online edition of the Antarctic Meteorite meteorite, meteor that survives the intense heat of atmospheric friction and reaches the earth's surface. Because of the destructive effects of this friction, only the very largest meteors become meteorites. Newsletter (http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/curator/antmet/ amn/amn.htm). The new specimen is the seventh known member of a group of martian meteorites called the nakhlites, which scientists propose originated within thick lava flows that solidified on Mars some 1.3 billion years ago.--R.C. |
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