Breaking 830 million years old crystal to find life inside

May 30, 2022 13:45 GMT+7

New research by scientists at West Virginia University and the American Geological Society has found that inside an 830-million-year-old crystal contains life.

Breaking 830 million years old crystal to find life inside

Ancient salt crystals found in central Australia. Through microscopic examination and image processing, the researchers discovered tiny remnants of prokaryotic and algal life in a halite salt crystal from the protozoan Browne Formation.

According to geologists, the ruins have been preserved in microscopic pockets of liquid inside the crystal for millions of years. Their role is compared to that of microscopic slums in small growing areas. However, the new discovery of life within these is still not fully understood.

Halite is sodium chloride, also known as rock salt, the discovery suggests that this naturally occurring mineral could be a resource for studying ancient but previously untapped saline environments. Furthermore, the creatures trapped in it are likely still alive.

The team is planning to disrupt the crystal to discover more and find answers to questions related to many speculations about ancient life.

This work was carried out with extreme caution because it would not be absolutely safe to return life from 830 million years ago to environmental conditions in the modern world.

But breaking the crystal does not have a big impact because according to experts, living things in an environment that have never been human will not generate a mechanism to penetrate inside the human body and cause disease.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to do that in the safest way possible, but it hasn’t worked out after a few years,” said Kathy Benison, lead author of the study and a geologist at West Virginia University.

The results represent an important step forward in studying the origin of life on Earth and open the door to finding life on Mars, where large salt deposits are evidence of liquid water reservoirs. large scale since time immemorial. The new discovery even takes humans one step further in the search for evidence of aliens.

Hoang Dung (synopsis)