The island of Santorini is one of the greatest tourist attractions in Greece, and also one of the most interesting volcanic landscapes. Specifically, some areas of this island in the Aegean Sea have characteristics that are very similar to some areas observed on Mars. This has been published by an international scientific team after analyzing basalt rocks collected in one of its coves.
3,600 years ago, Santorini suffered one of the largest volcanic eruptions recorded in history. Among the material that was expelled then, scientists have now found sedimentary rocks similar to those of the red planet.
This is how Ioannis Baziotis, a researcher at the Agricultural University of Athens and one of the authors of the study describes it: “In Cala Baios, in the south of the island, we have discovered basalts like those that have been identified by rovers on Mars and with properties similar to those of certain meteorites on Mars ”. A discovery that adds to the list of terrestrial rocks classified as Martian analogues.
More specifically, the authors have confirmed that this basaltic material is equivalent to that located by the Spirit and Curiosity explorers in the Gusev and Gale craters of the red planet, and that its chemical and mineralogical composition resembles that of Martian meteorites (olivine-phyto syringes ) and samples included in The International Space Analogue Rockstore (ISAR), a collection of terrestrial rocks used to test and calibrate instruments that will travel on space missions: “The basalts of this cove and similar ones that we have also found in two areas northeast of Santorini are quite abundant, “explains Baziotis,” so they can serve as an accessible and inexpensive resource for experiments, rather than using scarce and expensive olivine-physical syringes collected on Earth or laboriously prepared material from synthetic blends “.
“Optical microscopy and geochemical analyzes show that the Balos Cove basalts are viable analogues for characterizing geological processes and the chemical and mineralogical properties of materials present on the Martian surface,” according to another author, Anezina Solomonidou, a researcher at the European Center. of Space Astronomy (ESAC) directed by the European Space Agency (ESA) in Madrid. “In addition,” he adds, ” this area of the island is easily accessible and offers excellent logistics for sampling, testing and calibration of instruments, field training and other activities related to the current and future exploration of Mars .”
In addition to its tourist relevance, Santorini has become an excellent destination for comparative planet studies, a field that, according to Solomonidou, “plays an important role both in the characterization of geologically distant exotic worlds, such as planets and moons, and in a better understanding of our own planet. “
Finding and comparing characteristics of terrestrial areas with Martian areas can help to imagine possible past scenarios on the red planet, to understand if this planet ever had (or has, or will have) the ideal conditions for the development of life.
More information:
A. Pantazidis, I. Baziotis, A. Solomonidou, E. Manoutsoglou, D. Palles, E. Kamitsos, A. Karageorgis, G. Profitiliotis, M. Kondoyanni, S. Klemme, J. Berndt, D. Ming, PD Asimow . “Santorini volcano as a potential Martian analogue: The Balos Cove Basalts”. Icarus 325: 128-140, June 2019.
