This past weekend we were visited at the field station by a group of scientists from NASA Ames Research Facility. The group, which included a post-doc at NASA Ames, a professor from University of Illinois - Chicago and her husband and toddler, and an undergraduate field assistant from UIC, was in Taskesti investigating the pH of water from natural hot springs. The project is through NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and is basically looking for habitable extreme environments, such as would exist on Mars or icy satellites of outer planets (Europa, Titan, etc.). Specifically, the group was studying rocks from the Earth's mantle (olivine-rich) that were undergoing serpentinization, a process through which olivine-rich rocks interact with water and produce nitrogen, which is essential for life. This same reaction also produces hydrogen ions, which changes the pH of the water. The project is based on a correlation between pH of the water and microbial growth. The group is collecting water samples at sites on Earth where such rocks are exposed at the surface (it is fairly uncommon for mantle rocks to wind up on the surface) and are undergoing serpentinization, so they came to Taskesti to check out some natural hot springs in the area. The planetary application of the study is to look for these conditions on other bodies. One area on Mars, Nili Fossae, well known for its incised channels, has been a identified as a candidate site for these conditions, due to the detection of olivine by Mars Express (European Space Agency satellite).
Nili Fossae false-color image showing mineralogy:
It was pretty exciting to meet these folks and to have a lecture on planetary geology given by NASA scientists in a remote area of a foreign country. Even more crazy, the husband of the UIC professor, a planetary geologist at Ames, knows my advisor! Funny how things like that happen!
Time to work on my project report, more updates later today!
Salaam alaikum,
Sarah
Wow she brought her toddler on a research trip to rural Turkey!
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