The photographs taken on Mars by the Spirit self-propelled robot, combined with numerous photographs of the surface of the Red Planet, suggest that complex life forms in the solar system evolved not only on Earth. The redness of Mars is not accidental. It arose due to the oxidation and hydration of deep ferruginous rocks - basalts and andesites. At the same time, like rust on nails, red-brown iron hydroxide - the mineral limonite - appears. In geology, this process is called red-colored weathering
On Earth, red flowers appear in a hot equatorial climate with an abundance of water and oxygen in the atmosphere. If all forests on Earth are cut down, the wind will scatter iron oxides across the deserts, and our planet will also become red like Mars. The red color in Space is unusual, because it is the color of life, the color of blood, the color of ferric iron. In order for black basalts with ferrous iron to be covered with a red crust of ferric hydroxide, water and free atmospheric oxygen are required, in other words, photosynthesis is needed, life is needed.
I calculated that the surface of Mars "rusted" to a depth of one kilometer, it took 4000 trillion tons of free oxygen. For comparison, I will note that the Earth's atmosphere contains "only" 1200 trillion tons of oxygen, although the Earth is 9 times more massive than Mars.
It is possible that the oxidation processes on Mars swept its lithosphere to a much greater depth. This conclusion can be made, since the thickness of the red sands that make up the cliffs of the grandiose Mariner Gorge exceeds 10 km. This means that the dense oxygen atmosphere created by life has existed on Mars for billions of years. Obviously, this time was quite enough for the evolution of bacteria and the emergence of complex organisms.
Evolution may have been faster on Mars. After all, life on Earth remained at an extremely primitive level for a long time, and for 2.5 billion years it "grew" only to jellyfish and worms. Only in the Paleozoic, 570 million years ago, the formation of complex organisms began.
According to geological concepts, the Earth became the planet of primitive mammals quite recently, only 65 million years ago. Then there was a global ecological catastrophe associated with the fall of two large asteroids with a diameter of about 8 km, one in the Gulf of Mexico, the other on the coast of the Kara Sea. Part of the Earth's atmosphere during the explosions was torn off and carried into space with streams of incandescent plasma. The climate became noticeably colder, the bones of the hosts of the planet - dinosaurs, witnesses of that time, remained in the Mesozoic deposits.
Remains of cities?
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The modern atmosphere of Mars is very rare, corresponding to the earth's stratosphere at an altitude of over 30 km. Nevertheless, hurricanes rage here, raising dense clouds of red sand and piling up in depressions (frozen oceans) giant dunes up to a kilometer high. The atmosphere contains 95% CO2, 5% nitrogen and argon, and 0.1% O2. This oxygen is either residual from a past life, or it testifies to lichens and algae that survived in the warm microclimate at the bottom of the Mariner gorge. But the oxygen content is negligible; Mars could not rust from such an atmosphere. Why did the dense oxygen atmosphere disappear there?
A real sensation at one time was the discovery of a well-developed Martian system of river valleys, which the Americans stubbornly called "canals." These were real dry river beds with clearly defined terraces, flowing into depressions (oceans). They were not covered with sand and are perfectly preserved. This means that until recently, on a cosmic scale, Mars was warm and rivers flowed. Why did they dry up, why did the oceans freeze to the bottom and why did permafrost of many kilometers depth appear on Mars?
It is clear that quite recently a global catastrophe took place on the Red Planet, which destroyed the warm climate, forests, rivers, numerous animals and, as the photographs of "Spirit" show … anthropoids, very similar to the people of the Earth. I think that the cause of the disaster was the collapse of the now defunct third satellite of Mars in the Martian orbit. Now the Red Planet has two abnormally close satellites. These are typical asteroids, the closest - Phobos flies at a distance of only 5920 km from the surface of Mars, its length is 25, width is 21 km. It is close to the "Roche limit" - the distance at which a satellite is torn apart by internal tidal forces and, in the presence of an atmosphere, falls onto the planet.
Apparently, the third satellite, which should be called Thanatos (Death), passed the Roche limit quite recently. The fall of the debris of a giant weighing hundreds of trillions of tons completely destroyed all life and the atmosphere thrown into Space with plasma streams. The falling debris left hundreds of huge fresh craters tens and hundreds of kilometers in diameter, and limonite was calcined to 800 ° C and turned into the mineral maghemite, a magnetic red iron oxide - gamma-Fe2O3.
Maghemite is found in large quantities in the limonite sands of Mars; this is unequivocal evidence of the powerful calcination of the red-colored weathering crust. We also found maghemite in Yakutia, where it arose during the calcination of ferruginous weathering crusts of basalts during the explosion of the huge Popigai asteroid 35 million years ago.
The hypothesis about the recent death of life on Mars, expressed by me back in 1992, was actually confirmed by the sensational findings of the Spirit self-propelled robot in the Gusev crater. Amazing objects were found here, practically indistinguishable from … ordinary human skulls - with eye sockets and a hole in place of the nose. Three skulls have already been photographed. Skulls are outwardly white, shiny, have nothing to do with rock debris. Gray stones were also found here, very similar to human busts. These can be the heads of people with a small mouth and a large nose, like the Mayan Indians. And an absolutely amazing find - a figure of a seated woman about half a meter high, with an elegantly outstretched hand.
Of course, this is not a "play of nature". I myself am a field geologist, spent my whole life in the mountains and deserts, but I have never seen “stones” of this form. It seems that the rover is crawling through an ancient cemetery where statues stood and skulls protruded from the soil during wind erosion. To distinguish skulls from stones, it is enough to make a simple chemical analysis of these objects for phosphorus and calcium: there are many of them in the bones, but few in the rocks.
The rover also photographed a mysterious object that bears a striking resemblance to the skull of a large bird such as an ostrich or a lizard. Eye sockets, large beak or long jaws are clearly visible. If a geologist encounters such "miracles" on Earth, he has no doubt that he is dealing with the fossil remains of ancient people or animals. Why should an exception be made for Mars?
Space images also revealed rectangular objects very similar to the foundations of destroyed buildings covered with sand. Another surprising discovery is the image of a flat triangular UFO about 100 m in size, which collapsed onto Mars. This object was absent in the 1965 photo and appeared in the 1976 photo. The UFO has split in half and lies 15 miles from the Viking 1 probe landing site in 1976. The photo clearly shows the grooves dug in the sand when the UFO fell …
We cannot ignore the photos of NASA, in which several types of UFOs are clearly visible in the sky of Mars. We must not forget that some of the Soviet and American probes mysteriously disappeared in preparation for a soft landing on Mars, and in the space piloting centers there was an impression that the spacecraft were … captured by a UFO a huge object approaching them.
These facts are collectively too serious to be ignored. They indicate that, in addition to forests, various animals and anthropoids lived on Mars. It remains to be seen which of us was more advanced - earthlings or extinct Martians. It is possible that we are brothers, genetic descendants of the Martians, whose technical development allowed them to escape from the doomed ecosystem of Mars several tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe there was an intervention of a highly developed civilization - aliens with UFOs.
I repeat that the disaster on Mars was recent - only a few tens of thousands of years ago. This is evidenced by the excellent preservation of relief forms - river valleys and meteorite craters, as well as bone remains, despite powerful dust storms.
Fantastic?.. Almost fantastic. Do not forget that Cro-Magnons, people of the modern type, appeared on Earth 40 thousand years ago mysteriously, without transitional forms replacing the bestial Neanderthal. Maybe the advanced settlers from Mars changed the genes of the Neanderthals?.. Maybe it was at this time that the collapse of Thanatos and the asteroid attack of its debris, which ruined life on Mars, were timed? We have to admit that modern scientific discoveries are increasingly - for all their reality - a fantastic nature.
Alexander Portnov, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences,