The Rock Found By NASA In Antarctica And Caused A Stir In 1996 Has Been Successfully Researched, This Is The Result!

JAKARTA - A meteorite once caused a global frenzy in the 1990s. Because the meteorite, although doubtful, has been claimed by many people including the then US President, Bill Clinton, that the meteorite can show evidence of life on Mars. However, it was later proven that the object was nothing more than a lump of rock and water.

The four-billion-year-old piece of rock, discovered in 1984 in Antarctica, made headlines worldwide after a group of scientists led by NASA said in 1996 that the rock contained microscopic fossils of bacteria.

Their claims prompted Clinton to arrange a live televised press conference about the discovery. Called the object it could be 'one of the most astonishing insights into our universe science has ever discovered'.

“The implications are as broad and astonishing as one can imagine. Even when it promises answers to some of our oldest questions, it still raises more fundamental questions," Clinton said at the time.

The US president used the claims to justify further funding for America's space program. But at the time, many scientists were skeptical of the NASA-led findings and questioned the hype surrounding the apparent discovery.

They have now been confirmed after researchers spent decades studying the 4-pound rock in detail.

Experts from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, examining a small sample of the meteorite, found that the carbon-rich compounds were actually the result of saltwater and salty steam flowing over the rock for long periods of time.

According to the team that discovered it, the rock would have formed during the wet and early days of Mars, with two collisions occurring near the rock that heated the planet around its surface.

The third impact bounced a rock off the Red Planet, sent it into space millions of years ago, finally landed on Earth, and was discovered in Antarctica in 1984.

According to the Daily Mail report, the scientific community has long questioned NASA's original findings, suggesting something other than signs of life creating organic compounds.

For the new study, the team analyzed minerals in meteorites using a new technique, and found that they are related to minerals such as serpentine.

It is a dark green mineral that can sometimes look like snakeskin, and is associated with once-wet environments, such as early Mars when it first formed.

Researchers suggest that billions of years ago Martian groundwater, moving through cracks in the rock, formed tiny clumps of carbon.

It was they who made some scientists in the 1990s think that there was evidence of primitive life on ancient Mars contained within Antarctic meteorites.

The same process, water moving through cracks, could occur on Earth and could help explain the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere, they said.

One process that may be at play on young Mars is serpentinization, which occurs when volcanic rock rich in iron or magnesium interacts with circulating water. This changes their mineral properties and produces hydrogen in the rock.

Another method that may have led to this finding is carbonization, which is the result of rock reacting with acidic water containing dissolved carbon dioxide.

The organic compound discovered by the NASA team in 1996 was likely produced when the volcanic rock on Mars interacts with saltwater, which flows over the rock. According to the study's lead author, Andrew Steele, technological advances made possible his team's new findings.