Mars just got a whole lot weirder—scientists found that oxygen on the Red Planet behaves as if something is breathing! 🔴 NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered that oxygen levels mysteriously rise and fall with the seasons, way more than expected. Normally, gases should stay pretty steady, but Mars’ oxygen sometimes spikes, almost like it’s being released by something. Could it be underground life, strange chemical reactions, or something we haven’t even thought of yet? 🤯 Scientists are still trying to figure it out, but one thing’s for sure—Mars isn’t as lifeless as we once thought. Whatever’s causing this, it’s keeping us on our toes! 🚀 Animation is created by Bright Side.
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FunTranscript
00:00Something is happening on the red planet!
00:02Scientists believed that they knew nearly everything about its atmosphere.
00:06But a NASA rover has discovered something unexpected.
00:10There's more oxygen on Mars than they thought,
00:13and it behaves in weird ways.
00:15In the spring and summer,
00:17oxygen levels go up even more,
00:19and no one knows why.
00:22Now, you might think that
00:24when there's oxygen in an atmosphere,
00:26it's mostly because there's life somewhere around.
00:29Like trees on Earth that produce oxygen through photosynthesis.
00:33But on Mars, it's not that simple.
00:36Non-living processes can also create oxygen,
00:40so we can't surely say that its presence means there's life on Mars.
00:46Mars has long been one of the main candidates
00:48when it comes to looking for signs of extraterrestrial life.
00:52Back in the 90s,
00:53scientists announced they had spotted potential proof
00:56there could be life on Mars,
00:58because of microbes they had found in a meteorite
01:01that had arrived from the red planet.
01:03It looked like they had found fossils of bacteria.
01:07They actually stumbled upon tiny crystals of magnetite in the meteorite,
01:11which they believed could only have been produced by living organisms.
01:15It was such a mind-boggling discovery.
01:18People were excited,
01:19but many were also skeptical.
01:22It didn't prove there really was life on the red planet.
01:26Maybe there was life there a long time ago.
01:29The meteorite is thought to have originally formed on Mars
01:32billions of years ago,
01:34and to have landed on Earth thousands of years ago.
01:37Skeptics soon started to pick apart the evidence
01:40and eventually found some things that didn't make sense.
01:44For example, these magnetite crystals.
01:47No one could be sure how they formed.
01:49Why do they have to be bacteria?
01:52Some research has shown they could be the result of shock waves.
01:57Recently, the Perseverance rover has collected a couple of new rock samples
02:02from the Jezero crater on Mars.
02:04The theory says that about 3 billion years ago,
02:07before the red planet lost most of its atmosphere
02:10and basically just dried out,
02:12there was a big lake with a river flowing from it in that area.
02:16Whoa, what a great environment for life!
02:20Perseverance studied mud samples it had found
02:23on the bottom of the evaporated saltwater lake.
02:26Scientists were amazed to see a record number of sulfate molecules,
02:31something we usually find in mollusk shells on our home planet.
02:35Such organisms evolved a couple of hundred million years ago.
02:39But maybe there was a time when some of their space ancestors
02:43lived in water bodies on Mars.
02:46Mars has weaker gravity than Earth,
02:48which means these weird species could have got really big there,
02:53way bigger than their Earth cousins.
02:55Gravity plays a significant role
02:57when it comes to limiting the size of organisms.
02:59Bigger organisms need more energy to move against gravitational forces.
03:04But the creatures that may have lived there long ago
03:07are just a mix of hypothesis and our imagination,
03:11something that's still really hard to prove.
03:15Meet the Curiosity rover,
03:18another robot NASA is using to explore Mars.
03:21Curiosity has been in charge of measuring the composition
03:24of the atmosphere of the Red Planet for many years now.
03:27The rover has discovered that it mostly consists of carbon dioxide
03:31and a little bit of nitrogen and argon.
03:34The atmosphere of Mars has only one-tenth of one percent of oxygen,
03:39since, as far as we know at the moment,
03:41Mars doesn't have plants that could produce enough oxygen.
03:46But Curiosity has also discovered anomalies no one can really explain.
03:51It's found out that there are spikes in oxygen levels
03:54in the Gale Crater during the Martian spring and summer.
03:58Every year, oxygen levels go up and down in unpredictable patterns there.
04:04What's even more interesting is that the oxygen spike
04:07is similar to a seasonal spike in methane,
04:10which is a gas we often associate with life on Earth.
04:14No wonder scientists are scratching their heads
04:17and wondering if there's a connection between the two gases,
04:20and if they both come from the same source on the Martian surface.
04:24Is there something big that breathes there?
04:27Come on, we'll be happy even with some small space worms in the soil.
04:32There's a type of salt called perchlorates in the Martian soil.
04:36Some scientists believe perchlorates might be responsible
04:39for the strange spikes in oxygen levels.
04:41But like with most things we know about space, it's just a theory.
04:46Also, scientists think that perchlorates breaking down in the Martian soil
04:51release oxygen too slowly to cause and explain
04:54the sudden increase in oxygen levels.
04:57One of the suspects is hydrogen peroxide,
05:00which is like water's unstable cousin.
05:03Hydrogen peroxide forms when sunlight breaks up carbon dioxide
05:07and water vapor in the Martian atmosphere.
05:10It can seep into the soil and stick to particles underground,
05:14which means it forms some kind of oxygen storage tank.
05:18Some data even show there are pockets of subsurface water in the Martian soil
05:23that may be hiding enough dissolved oxygen to actually support life.
05:29But even if the hydrogen peroxide could stay in the soil for millions of years,
05:34it would still only explain a small part of the increase in the level of oxygen.
05:38So you can't blame it for the whole thing.
05:41We can also take a look at an old experiment from the 1970s
05:45where scientists found that moistening the Martian soil
05:48caused it to release a lot of oxygen.
05:51However, they did this experiment at a warmer temperature than the planet's average.
05:56And again, it doesn't explain how the oxygen spike keeps happening every year.
06:02None of the clues we have seems to fit the case.
06:07Mars may not have enough of its own oxygen,
06:09but it's possible to make this gas there.
06:12NASA conducted a small experiment where they tried and managed to produce oxygen on Mars.
06:18MOXIE is a device that can make oxygen on Mars.
06:22It managed to produce enough oxygen for an astronaut to breathe for 100 minutes.
06:27This awesome device worked in pretty tough conditions.
06:31At night or during the day, at extreme temperatures,
06:34and during the crazy dust storms the red planet is known for.
06:38Despite all this, MOXIE still kept up with producing high-purity oxygen.
06:44MOXIE is a clever device that can make oxygen on Mars
06:47by taking in carbon dioxide from the planet's atmosphere
06:51and heating it up to incredibly high temperatures.
06:54This allows the device to pull oxygen atoms from the carbon dioxide
06:58and produce breathable oxygen gas.
07:03If we want to use MOXIE to make enough oxygen for human missions to Mars,
07:07we need to make a bigger version of the device.
07:10But if we make it bigger, we might have trouble keeping it at the right temperature
07:15and making sure it heats up evenly without breaking.
07:18The ultimate goal would be to create an oxygen device
07:21that could continuously support a human mission for about 400 days.
07:26With a bigger version of MOXIE, we'd have enough oxygen to support crew members
07:31and even propel a return rocket to our home planet.
07:36When you see the dusty red surface of Mars,
07:39you can't say it's a place that hides liquid water underneath.
07:42Some say it's too cold for water to exist on Mars anyway.
07:46But there are stories that there could be a hidden world of liquid water,
07:51just like subglacial lakes in Antarctica.
07:54And to find out more, we might have to drill down about a mile beneath the surface.
07:59Unfortunately, it's not going to happen anytime soon.
08:05But in the meantime, scientists have been using a spacecraft called Mars Express
08:10to study radar reflections around the southern pole of Mars.
08:14The reflections seem to indicate there could be liquid water,
08:18and the planet's interior might be keeping it warm.
08:21Some claim it might just be rock.
08:23We hope there are underground lakes on Mars,
08:26because it would be a perfect spot to look for life.
08:29After all, scientists have found bacteria living in subglacial lakes on Earth.
08:34But we don't know for sure how deep they are,
08:37or if they're just small veins of water in the ice.
08:41Only time, and more exploration, will tell.
08:49That's it for today.
08:50So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,
08:52then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
08:55Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!