4.45 billion year old meteorite reveals habitable places beyond Earth

The famous "Black Beauty" meteorite has just been proven to come from a place where life may have existed before Earth.

Researchers from Curtin University in Australia have used new techniques to analyze the Black Beauty meteorite , a space rock that traveled from Mars to Earth. And they have found evidence that the early red planet may have supported life.

At 4.45 billion years ago our Earth was in the early stages of the Hadean eon, still a "hellish" ball covered by magma oceans.

But the Martian world may have been entirely different back then: Black Beauty's 4.45-billion-year-old zircon grains suggest its home was a warm, habitable body of water.

The Black Beauty Martian meteorite has been shared with many research groups from around the world - (Photo: NASA).

Using nanoscale geochemical analysis methods, Australian researchers identified geochemical signatures of water-rich fluids and elemental evidence of a hydrothermal system.

Hydrothermal systems are fissure-like structures on the ocean floor where water is heated and nourished by geothermal energy.

Many studies suggest that hydrothermal systems are the cradle of life on planets , including Earth.

Co-author Dr Aaron Cavosie from Curtin University's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences explains that the discovery sheds light on how ancient volcanic activity on Mars created a potentially habitable environment very early on.

Previously, some evidence from the pre-Noachian period on Mars - before 4.1 billion years ago - showed that there was liquid water on the planet.

New findings from Black Beauty suggest that habitable worlds on the red planet may have existed even earlier than we expected. And that's not unreasonable.

Mars is one of three planets in our solar system's "Goldilocks zone of habitability ," along with Earth and Venus. 

Although unfortunate events have left the planet a barren ball in its present state, many scientists believe that this world may once have supported life.

This hypothesis was further strengthened after the Curiosity rover first discovered the "building blocks of life" on Mars in 2018, followed by a series of other interesting evidences.

Black Beauty, with the Vietnamese name "Black Beauty" , code NWA 7034 in NASA's records, landed in the Sahara desert in 2011 after billions of years of travel.

The meteorite has become one of the world's top scientific treasures after NASA's examination showed it came from Mars, is 4.45 billion years old and is 10 times richer in water than other Martian meteorites.