Do Newfoundland’s Tablelands hold the answer to life on Mars? This researcher is trying to find out | 24CA News

Read Transcribed Audio

Researcher Penny Morrill says there are occasions throughout her work when Newfoundland’s Tablelands really feel otherworldly.

“It looks like you’re looking at Mars,” the low temperature geochemist advised The Current’s Matt Galloway.

The Tablelands in Gros Morne National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is among the planet’s most unusual landscapes. Its orange peridotite rocks are straight out of the Earth’s mantle, thrust as much as the floor because of historic continental drift.

As a outcome, it is acquired a excessive focus of poisonous metals that makes it close to not possible for any plant to name this panorama residence — a stark distinction to the forested space on the gabbro rock perpendicular to the Tablelands.

But the Tablelands should not simply much like Mars in appears to be like solely. Morrill, whose analysis within the Tablelands is funded by the Canadian Space Agency, has discovered micro organism dwelling within the native stream’s excessive pH currents on account of a pure course of known as serpentinization.

Morrill mentioned it is attainable that serpentinization additionally occurs on Mars, so she’s researching what the Tablelands in Newfoundland can reveal about discovering both previous or present life on the Red Planet.

“If there might be life on Mars, it would most likely be in the subsurface, which is protected from [solar winds and radiation],” she mentioned.

“So serpentinization, since we know now that they can support life on Earth and there’s chemical energy there to support life on Earth, potentially, could they currently or in the past have supported life on Mars?”

The reply’s within the springs

Serpentinization is a response that occurs between groundwater and peridotite rocks, creating excessive situations for all times.

“It increases the pH of the water up to … 12 or 13,” she mentioned. “This is similar to the pH that you would get in bleach.”

“We were interested in trying to figure out could anything even live in this extreme environment.”

Morrill first got here to the Tablelands in 2009. She wasn’t conscious of any groundwater springs that existed within the Tablelands, however she did hear rumours about their location inside the panorama. 

She mentioned these springs are recognized by white carbonate precipitate, which is fashioned when carbonates — a kind of carbon-based molecule — react with different substances in a liquid.

“I had just [spent] all day searching for this white carbonate precipitate on these orange rocks, and I really had just gotten completely discouraged,” she mentioned.

“Then, all of a sudden, at the moment I gave up, I found exactly what I was looking for.”

Morrill’s group began swabbing completely different surfaces utilizing life detection devices — and to their shock, they discovered Adenosine triphosphate, an natural compound she known as “the energy molecule of life.”

“Then we started filtering the water, and then we looked at the filters and under a microscope we found bacteria on the filters,” she mentioned. 

“So all of a sudden it completely opened our eyes to the potential that this very high ph water has. [It’s] very low in organic carbon, very low nutrients, [but] it’s actually supporting life.”

An extraordinary organism

This was extremely peculiar to Morrill. Like crops, some bacterial organisms will often convert carbon dioxide into natural matter to develop, she defined. What’s extra, water with excessive pH ranges often have low quantities of carbon dioxide.

It seems the micro organism she discovered had been utilizing carbon monoxide as a substitute of carbon dioxide.

“So potentially, carbon monoxide may be one of the inorganic carbon sources for the base of the food chain,” she mentioned.

In one other web site that Morrill works in, the Cedars Gateway in California, she mentioned her colleagues discovered a “similar or the exact same organism.”

“They even found the organism in a high-pH mine tailings from ultra basic rock [like peridotite],” she mentioned.

“It was a new organism, and we called it Serpentinomonas.”

Morrill does not know why the identical organism seems in each Newfoundland and California. But she is happy about what these findings may imply for the potential of life to develop on Mars.

She mentioned there’s a potential that serpentinization is both presently taking place within the subsurface of Mars, or has occurred prior to now — and it is these websites that ought to be studied when in search of life on Mars.

“I’m always for looking for life in locations where you get serpentinization springs because it’s bringing the life to the surface — or at least some sort of biomolecules on the surface for you, so you don’t have to do extensive drilling,” she mentioned.

Up north in Nunavut, geobiologist and planetary scientist Haley Sapers is learning whether or not serpentinization is also a possible supply for methane on Mars.

“We know that there’s methane on Mars, and we have no idea where it’s coming from,” she mentioned.

Sapers research methane that seeps from extraordinarily salty chilly springs on Axel Heiberg Island, an uninhabited island in Nunavut’s Qikiqtaaluk areas.

“This is the only place in the world where you have these methane seeps in permafrost,” she mentioned. “So it’s the only place in the world where there exists an analogue for the type of methane release that we think might be happening on Mars.”

A neighborhood celeb

For the time being, Morrill is caught researching serpentinization on Earth — however her onerous work is not going unnoticed. Her public outreach has allowed her to attach with vacationers and fans, younger and previous.

Her analysis has additionally made her a little bit of a neighborhood celeb. On the boardwalk main as much as the springs, there is a image of Morrill from 2009, sampling a displaying with a pH of 12.

Morrill wasn’t conscious of the picture till a pal despatched it to her. She mentioned she’s “humbled” by the gesture.

“My research is so minor compared to what other people have done here in the park,” she mentioned. “But anyways, this is wonderful.”