NASA said in a statement Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\nAn image of Mars points out the up-close, mineral-rich surface ridges, which experts believe were made by flowing water. Nasa<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Red Planet once had rivers, lakes, and possibly an ocean. Although scientists aren\u2019t sure why, its water eventually dried up and the planet transformed into the chilly desert it is today,\u201d NASA said.<\/p>\n
Flowing groundwater created the crisscrossing ridges \u2014 some just a few inches tall \u2014 by leaving behind a trail of minerals that accumulated in cracks and fissures and then hardened as it dried.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRemarkably, the boxwork patterns show that even in the midst of this drying, water was still present underground, creating changes seen today,\u201d NASA said in its release. <\/p>\n
\u201cEons of sandblasting by Martian wind wore away the rock but not the minerals, revealing networks of resistant ridges within,\u201d it added. <\/p>\n
The Curiosity rover has been collecting data on Mars since it touched down in 2012. Nasa<\/p>\n
The formation occurs via a similar mechanism to stalagmites and stalactites here on Earth, experts said.<\/p>\n
The \u201cspiderwebs\u201d got their name when researchers observed the arachnid-esque pattern of ridges from orbit.<\/p>\n
The pattern stretches across miles of a layer of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-tall mountain, which is also being studied by researchers on the Curiosity rover team at NASA.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s statement noted that \u201cThe images and data being collected are already raising new questions about how the Martian surface.\u201d Nasa<\/p>\n
Curiosity used a robotic arm to dig into the bedrock of the area to gather samples for tests that seek to find any organic molecules in the ancient dirt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, researchers discovered evidence that the barren desert planet could have once supported advanced life<\/a> \u2014 finding the carbonate mineral siderite in 5% to 10% of samples collected back in April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s rocking into spiderwebs. NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover snapped pictures of a long-sought geological structure \u2014 dubbed \u201cspiderwebs\u201d \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[6400,3091,916,159,783,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-12727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-curiosity-rover","9":"tag-mars","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114742427276237762","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}