Some optimistic astronomers might still hope to find signs of aliens on Mars, but no one could have expected to discover something that sounds quite so delicious.
Scientists have been baffled after discovering bizarre structures on the Martian surface which look like ‘a patchwork of honeycombs, or maybe a patch of waffles’.
These ‘wild’ hexagonal shapes were uncovered by the Mars Curiosity Rover inside the Gale Crater, where the roaming robot landed in 2012.
Scientists say these tasty-sounding structures might hold the secrets of how life could have started on the Red Planet.
Writing in a NASA blog post, Dr Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, a planetary geologist at the University of New Brunswick, wrote: ‘Coming into planning this morning, we found a workspace with amazingly well preserved polygonal shaped fractures.
‘We have spotted these before but usually not as well preserved and extensive as this.’
Previous studies suggest that these types of formations may have been created by wet and dry seasons 3.6 to 3.8 million years ago.
As the planet dried out, repeated wet-dry cycles created cracks just like the ones you might see around a drying lake bed on Earth, which have been preserved ever since.
NASA’s Curiosity Rover has discovered a set of baffling ‘honey and waffle’ structures on the Martian surface, and scientists still aren’t sure how they were formed
After discovering the honeycomb fractures last week, NASA scientists instructed Curiosity to analyse their composition.
Using a technique called ‘Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy’, Curiosity will fire a laser pulse at the surface of the sample to create a small burst of plasma.
By looking at the light emitted by this plasma, scientists are able to work out what kinds of chemicals are in the rocks.
NASA also plans to take some measurements of the nearby bedrock without any honeycomb structures for comparison.
However, it might be some time before the findings from those studies are analysed and made public.
In the meantime, NASA’s rover operators are not entirely sure what the polygon structures might be.
Dr O’Connell-Cooper says: ‘The origin of these cracks is not clear – could they have formed as desiccation cracks as Mars began to get drier, billions of years ago?
‘Or during later periods when groundwater moved through the bedrock?’
The structures may have been formed when an ancient lakebed repeatedly filled and dried out in Mars’ wetter past. Curiosity will use its laser to gather data about the structures’ composition to learn more
NASA’s Curiosity Rover has been travelling around Mars’ Gale Crater since it landed in 2012. This vast impact crater was formed around 3.7 billion years ago when a meteor hit the planet. In the distant past, it may have been filled with water and formed a large lake
This is not the first time that NASA has spotted regular, polygon structures on Mars, but scientists are still working to learn more about how they formed.
Previously, scientists thought that they were mud cracks, like those you might see in an empty riverbed during a drought, formed as a once-wet Mars dried out.
However, new analysis has suggested that their origins might be more complex.
In 2021, NASA first took images of a series of polygonal cracks on the slopes of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile (5 km) tall peak in the Gale Crater.
The cracks were found above a rich clay deposit, which was probably once the bed of an ancient lake, and below an area rich in sulphates left behind as the water dried.
This initially supported the idea that the cracks had been formed by a drying lake, but subsequent analysis showed that the newer cracks contained traces of sulphates.
This suggested that the lake had dried out multiple times, pulling sulphate-rich water down into the cracks.
According to the researchers, this means the cracks were made during a time in which the water level in the lake was rising and falling seasonally.
Researchers found that these cracks contained chemicals called sulphates, which suggested the lake had been repeatedly filled and dried. On Earth, these wet-dry cycles could have been the origin of the complex molecules which led to the first lifeforms
Their complex, waffle-like shape emerged and became more complex through these repeated wet-dry cycles.
Since these newly discovered polygons have a similar shape, they may have been formed through a similar process.
If so, they could hold clues to how life might have formed on Mars during the planet’s wet past.
On Earth, scientists believe that repeated wet-dry cycles could be how the first organic compounds, molecules found in all living things, were formed.
As the water rises and falls, new chemicals are constantly brought into the environment, which encourages the reactions which form complex molecules.
In a statement at the time, NASA scientist Dr Ashwin Vasavada said that these processes could have ‘promoted the origin of life’.
However, these smaller structures are not the only mysterious patterns that scientists have spotted on Mars.
In 2023, the Chinese Zhurong rover detected 15 vast honeycomb structures hidden dozens of metres beneath the Martian surface.
Billions of years ago, Mars may have been covered with liquid water, the traces of this history can now only be found in its geology
Scientists have also found vast polygon-shaped cracks beneath the Martian surface, which may have been formed by sudden changes in temperature as the climate shifted
Each crack is 70 metres across and is bordered by 30 metres of ice and mud slurry formed between two and 3.5 billion years ago.
On Earth, similar structures are only found in Greenland, Iceland, and Antarctica, where sudden temperature shifts create fractures that are filled with ice and mud.
Scientists believe a similar process might have split open Mars’ surface as it wobbled on its axis, drastically changing the seasonal temperatures.
This could be yet another clue about how the Red Planet’s climate has changed over the last few billion years, and whether it was ever habitable.
