Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
Forum Contest for Science

Site Tools

  • AAAS
  • Subscribe
  • Feedback

Site Search

Search Advanced

Science 5 August 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5736, pp. 888 - 890
DOI: 10.1126/science.1112794
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Perspectives

Also see the archival list of Science's Enhanced Perspectives and Policy Forums

PLANETARY SCIENCE:
Enhanced: The Enigma of the Martian Soil

Amos Banin

Mars has a fine reddish soil that offers many clues to the presence of water and whether life exists or has existed in the past. In his Perspective, Banin discusses what has been learned about martian soil from past missions to the Red Planet. Increasing evidence suggests that chemical processes involving water, weathered martian rocks and formed the fine soil. The chemical and mineralogical nature of the soil is unique and several formation mechanisms that may explain this have been proposed. Soils in the Atacama Desert in Chile, one of the driest regions on Earth, may offer valuable information on Mars-like soils. Successfully understanding these soils, however, may require protecting this fragile ecosystem from human contamination.

The author is in the Department of Soil and Water Sciences, Hebrew University, Rehovot 76100, Israel, and at the SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. E-mail: amos.banin{at}huji.ac.il

Read the Full Text

ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

ADVERTISEMENT
Click Me!

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)