New evidence suggests that Mars had a cyclical climate in the past, potentially conducive to the emergence of life. Researchers have found fossil evidence of wet mud drying and cracking in T-shaped intersections, indicating a changing climate on the red planet.
We know, based on what we see here on Earth, the kinds of processes that can produce these patterns in a dry basin. And the researchers, after studying the options, concluded that the most likely explanation is wet mud drying.
And not just drying once, either. Wet mud that dries once cracks in T-shaped intersections. It's maturation over repeated drying cycles that produces the Y-shaped crack intersections, resulting in a hexagonal pattern.The salts in the patterned rock are at a much higher concentration than the host bedrock, too, suggesting that the salts were deposited there – likely by saline water permeating the mud, then evaporating and leaving the salt behind.
Finally, the thickness of the patterned rock suggests that regular wet-dry conditions persisted on Mars for a long time – thousands to perhaps millions of years. We have, as yet, no evidence of microbial life on Mars, but these cyclic conditions would have been favorable for the organization of organic molecules into complex compounds.
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