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Doja Cat was covered in red body paint and 30,000 crystals at Haute Couture Week

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Written by Oscar Holland, CNN

Doja Cat wowed onlookers on Monday as she arrived at Schiaparelli’s latest runway show in a dramatic head-to-toe look adorned with red body paint and 30,000 Swarovski crystals.

The eye-catching outfit, which was custom-designed by the fashion house’s creative director Daniel Roseberry, was brought to life by makeup artist Pat McGrath, whose team spent almost five hours completing the look.
The singer’s arrival at the Petit Palais in Paris marked a dramatic start to Schiaparelli’s Couture Spring-Summer 2023 show, the opening event of the biannual Haute Couture Week in Paris. Dubbed “Inferno Couture,” the label’s latest collection was inspired by Dante’s “Inferno” and the nine circles of hell, according to Roseberry’s show notes.

Doja Cat stuns at the Schiaparelli show in 30,000 Swarovski crystals. Credit: Schiaparelli

Doja Cat’s fittingly devilish outfit featured a silk bustier, a skirt covered in lacquered wooden beads and a pair of matching red boots.

Writing on social media Monday, McGrath described the look as “Doja’s Inferno.” The makeup artist also posted a behind-the-scenes timelapse video showing her team painting the star’s skin and applying thousands of crystals by hand.
In a caption for another video, McGrath described the singer’s “sublime patience” as “inspiring.” Roseberry, who in 2019 became the first American to lead a French couture house, meanwhile posted a picture of himself with Doja Cat to Instagram while honoring the makeup artist’s “genius.”

Related video: Daniel Roseberry, the Texan designer leading a historic couture house

Doja Cat arrived at the show with stylist Brett Alan Nelson, who wore a matching red suit and long jacket by Vetements. She then took a front-row seat just a feet away from Kylie Jenner, who also made headlines with a black velvet strapless gown adorned with a life-sized faux lion head.

On the runway, other items of Schiaparelli’s “faux-taxidermy” were on display, with Naomi Campbell and Irina Shayk among those to appear on the catwalk wearing similar animal head gowns.



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Science

Scientists Create Crystals That Generate Electricity From Heat

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Previous thermoelectric devices use expensive and toxic elements. Now scientists have created inexpensive crystals composed of copper, manganese, germanium, and sulfur that can efficiently convert heat to electricity.

A synthetic sulfide mineral with thermoelectric properties.

In the effort to efficiently convert heat into electricity, easily accessible materials from harmless raw materials open up new perspectives in the development of safe and inexpensive so-called thermoelectric materials. A synthetic copper mineral acquires a complex structure and microstructure through simple changes in its composition, thereby laying the foundation for the desired properties, according to a study published recently in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

The novel synthetic material is composed of copper, manganese, germanium, and sulfur, and it is produced in a rather simple process, explains materials scientist Emmanuel Guilmeau, CNRS researcher at CRISMAT laboratory, Caen, France, who is the corresponding author of the study. “The powders are simply mechanically alloyed by ball-milling to form a precrystallized phase, which is then densified by 600 degrees

Thermoelectric materials convert heat to electricity. This is especially useful in industrial processes where waste heat is reused as valuable electric power. The converse approach is the cooling of electronic parts, for example, in smartphones or cars. Materials used in these kinds of applications have to be not only efficient, but also inexpensive and, above all, safe for health.

However, thermoelectric devices used to date make use of expensive and toxic elements such as lead and tellurium, which offer the best conversion efficiency. To find safer alternatives, Emmanuel Guilmeau and his team have turned to derivatives of natural copper-based sulfide minerals. These mineral derivatives are mainly composed of nontoxic and abundant elements, and some of them have thermoelectric properties.

Now, the team has succeeded in producing a series of thermoelectric materials showing two crystal structures within the same material. “We were very surprised at the result. Usually, slightly changing the composition has little effect on the structure in this class of materials,” says Emmanuel Guilmeau describing their discovery.

The team found that replacing a small fraction of the manganese with copper produced complex microstructures with interconnected nanodomains, defects, and coherent interfaces, which affected the material’s transport properties for electrons and heat.

Emmanuel Guilmeau says that the novel material produced is stable up to 400 degrees Celsius (750 degrees



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Science

Team creates crystals that generate electricity from heat

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Credit: Wiley

To convert heat into electricity, easily accessible materials from harmless raw materials open up new perspectives in the development of safe and inexpensive so-called “thermoelectric materials.” A synthetic copper mineral acquires a complex structure and microstructure through simple changes in its composition, thereby laying the foundation for the desired properties, according to a study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

The novel synthetic material is composed of copper, manganese, germanium, and sulfur, and it is produced in a rather simple process, explains materials scientist Emmanuel Guilmeau, CNRS researcher at CRISMAT laboratory, Caen, France, who is the corresponding author of the study. “The powders are simply mechanically alloyed by ball-milling to form a precrystallized phase, which is then densified by 600 degrees Celsius. This process can be easily scaled up,” he says.

Thermoelectric materials convert heat to electricity. This is especially useful in industrial processes where waste heat is reused as valuable electric power. The converse approach is the cooling of electronic parts, for example, in smartphones or cars. Materials used in this kind of applications have to be not only efficient, but also inexpensive and, above all, safe for health.

However, thermoelectric devices used to date make use of expensive and toxic elements such as lead and tellurium, which offer the best conversion efficiency. To find safer alternatives, Emmanuel Guilmeau and his team have turned to derivatives of natural copper-based sulfide minerals. These mineral derivatives are mainly composed of nontoxic and abundant elements, and some of them have thermoelectric properties.

Now, the team has succeeded in producing a series of thermoelectric materials showing two crystal structures within the same material. “We were very surprised at the result. Usually, slightly changing the composition has little effect on the structure in this class of materials,” says Emmanuel Guilmeau, describing their discovery.

The team found that replacing a small fraction of the manganese with copper produced complex microstructures with interconnected nanodomains, defects, and coherent interfaces, which affected the material’s transport properties for electrons and heat.

Emmanuel Guilmeau says that the novel material produced is stable up to 400 degrees Celsius, a range well within the waste heat temperature range of most industries. He is convinced that, based on this discovery, cheaper novel and nontoxic thermoelectric materials could be designed to replace more problematic materials.

More information:
V. Pavan Kumar et al, Engineering Transport Properties in Interconnected Enargite‐Stannite Type Cu 2+ x Mn 1− x GeS 4 Nanocomposites, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2022). DOI: 10.1002/anie.202210600

Citation:
Team creates crystals that generate electricity from heat (2022, November 8)
retrieved 9 November 2022
from https://phys.org/news/2022-11-team-crystals-electricity.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.



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Science

An ‘Impossible’ Quasicrystal Was Created in The World’s First Nuclear Bomb Test

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At 5:29 am on the morning of 16 July 1945, in the state of New Mexico, a dreadful slice of history was made.

The dawn calm was torn asunder as the United States Army detonated a plutonium implosion device known as the Gadget – the world’s very first test of a nuclear bomb, known as the Trinity test. This moment would change warfare forever.

 

The energy release, equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, vaporized the 30-meter test tower (98 ft) and miles of copper wires connecting it to recording equipment. The resulting fireball fused the tower and copper with the asphalt and desert sand below into green glass – a new mineral called trinitite.

Decades later, scientists discovered a secret hidden in a piece of that trinitite – a rare form of matter known as a quasicrystal, once thought to be impossible.

“Quasicrystals are formed in extreme environments that rarely exist on Earth,” geophysicist Terry Wallace of Los Alamos National Laboratory explained last year.

“They require a traumatic event with extreme shock, temperature, and pressure. We don’t typically see that, except in something as dramatic as a nuclear explosion.”

Most crystals, from the humble table salt to the toughest diamonds, obey the same rule: their atoms are arranged in a lattice structure that repeats in three-dimensional space. Quasicrystals break this rule – the pattern in which their atoms are arranged does not repeat.

When the concept first emerged in the scientific world in 1984, this was thought to be impossible: crystals were either ordered or disordered, with no in-between. Then they were actually found, both created in laboratory settings and in the wild – deep inside meteorites, forged by thermodynamic shock from events like a hypervelocity impact.

 

Knowing that extreme conditions are required to produce quasicrystals, a team of scientists led by geologist Luca Bindi of the University of Florence in Italy decided to take a closer look at trinitite.

But not the green stuff. Although they’re uncommon, we have seen enough quasicrystals to know that they tend to incorporate metals, so the team went looking for a much rarer form of the mineral – red trinitite, given its hue by the vaporized copper wires incorporated therein.

Using techniques such as scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, they analyzed six small samples of red trinitite. Finally, they got a hit in one of the samples – a tiny, 20-sided grain of silicon, copper, calcium and iron, with a five-fold rotational symmetry impossible in conventional crystals – an “unintended consequence” of warmongering.

“This quasicrystal is magnificent in its complexity – but nobody can yet tell us why it was formed in this way,” Wallace explained in 2021 when the team’s research was published.

“But someday, a scientist or engineer is going to figure that out and the scales will be lifted from our eyes and we will have a thermodynamic explanation for its creation. Then, I hope, we can use that knowledge to better understand nuclear explosions and ultimately lead to a more complete picture of what a nuclear test represents.”

 

This discovery represents the oldest known anthropogenic quasicrystal, and it suggests that there may be other natural pathways for the formation of quasicrystals. For example, the fulgurites of molten sand forged by lightning strikes, and material from meteor impact sites, could both be a source of quasicrystals in the wild.

The research could also help us better understand illicit nuclear tests, with the eventual aim of curbing the proliferation of nuclear armaments, the researchers said. Studying the minerals forged at other nuclear testing sites could uncover more quasicrystals, the thermodynamic properties of which could be a tool for nuclear forensics.

“Understanding other countries’ nuclear weapons requires that we have a clear understanding of their nuclear testing programs,” Wallace said.

“We typically analyze radioactive debris and gases to understand how the weapons were built or what materials they contained, but those signatures decay. A quasicrystal that is formed at the site of a nuclear blast can potentially tell us new types of information – and they’ll exist forever.”

The research has been published in PNAS.

 

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Science

Never-before-seen crystals found in perfectly preserved meteorite dust

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A close-up image of one of the new crystals taken using an electron microscope. (Image credit: Taskaev et al.)

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Researchers have discovered never-before-seen types of crystal hidden in tiny grains of perfectly preserved meteorite dust. The dust was left behind by a massive space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, nine years ago.

On Feb. 15, 2013, an asteroid measuring 59 feet (18 meters) across and weighing 12,125 tons (11,000 metric tons) entered Earth‘s atmosphere at around 41,600 mph (66,950 km/h). Fortunately, the meteor exploded around 14.5 miles (23.3 kilometers) above the city of Chelyabinsk in southern Russia, showering the surrounding area in tiny meteorites and avoiding a colossal single collision with the surface. Experts at the time described the event as a major wake-up call to the dangers asteroids pose to the planet.

The Chelyabinsk meteor explosion was the largest of its kind to occur in Earth’s atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event. It exploded with a force 30 times greater than the atomic bomb that rocked Hiroshima, according to NASA (opens in new tab). Video footage (opens in new tab) of the event showed the space rock burning up in a flash of light that was briefly brighter than the sun, before creating a powerful sonic boom that broke glass, damaged buildings and injured around 1,200 people in the city below, according to Live Science’s sister site Space.com (opens in new tab). 

In a new study, researchers anlyzed some of the tiny fragments of space rock that were left behind after the meteor exploded, known as meteorite dust. Normally, meteors produce a small amount of dust as they burn up, but the tiny grains are lost to scientists because they are either too small to find, scattered by the wind, fall into water or are contaminated by the environment. However, after the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded, a massive plume of dust hung in the atmosphere for more than four days before eventually raining down on Earth’s surface, according to NASA. And luckily, layers of snow that fell shortly before and after the event trapped and preserved some dust samples until scientists could recover them shortly after. 

Related: Diamond hauled from deep inside Earth holds never-before-seen mineral 

The researchers stumbled upon the new types of crystal while they were examining specks of the dust under a standard microscope. One of these tiny structures, which was only just big enough to see under the microscope, was fortuitously in focus right at the center of one of the slides when one team member peered through the eyepiece. If it had been anywhere else the team would likely have missed it, according to Sci-News (opens in new tab).  

After analyzing the dust with more powerful electron microscopes, the researchers found many more of these crystals and examined them in much greater detail. However, even then, “finding the crystals using an electron microscope was rather challenging due to their small size,” the researchers wrote in their paper, which was published May 7 in The European Physical Journal Plus (opens in new tab). 

A computer model showing a massive cloud of dust in the atmosphere leftover from the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion in 2013. (Image credit: NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio)

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The new crystals came in two distinct shapes; quasi-spherical, or “almost spherical,” shells and hexagonal rods, both of which were “unique morphological peculiarities,” the researchers wrote in the study. 

Further analysis using X-rays revealed that the crystals were made of layers of graphite — a form of carbon made from overlapping sheets of atoms, commonly used in pencils  — surrounding a central nanocluster at the heart of the crystal. The researchers propose that the most likely candidates for these nanoclusters are buckminsterfullerene (C60), a cage-like ball of carbon atoms, or polyhexacyclooctadecane (C18H12), a molecule made from carbon and hydrogen. 

The team suspects that the crystals formed in the high-temperature and high-pressure conditions created by the meteor breaking apart, although the exact mechanism is still unclear. In the future, the scientists hope to track down other samples of meteorite dust from other space rocks to see if these crystals are a common byproduct of meteor break-ups or are unique to the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Science

‘Time crystals’ work around laws of physics to offer new era of quantum computing

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The connecting of two “time crystals” in a superfluid of helium-3 barely one-ten-thousandth of a degree above absolute zero could be a huge step toward a new kind of quantum computer.

Time crystals are bizarre structures of atoms, the existence of which was only predicted as recently as 2012, with experimental proof following a few years later. In a normal crystal, such as diamond or salt, the atoms are arranged in a regularly repeating spatial pattern — a lattice or similar framework. And like most materials, when the atoms are in their ground state — their lowest possible energy level — they stop jiggling. 

Time crystals, on the other hand, consist of atoms that repeat in time rather than in space, oscillating back and forth, or spinning, even in their ground state. They can maintain this motion perpetually, without requiring an input of energy or losing energy in the process.

Related: Otherworldly ‘time crystal’ made inside Google quantum computer could change physics forever

In doing so, these time crystals can defy a concept known as entropy. The second law of thermodynamics describes entropy as how any system grows more disordered over time. As an example, consider the orbits of the planets around the sun. For simplicity, we imagine them moving in clockwork order, always arriving back at the same place at the same time in their respective orbits. In reality, however, things are messy: The gravity of the other planets, or passing stars, can tug and pull on the planets, making subtle changes to their orbits. 

Hence, the orbits of the planets are inherently chaotic. A small change to one can potentially have big repercussions for all of them. The system becomes disordered over time — the entropy of the system increases.

Time crystals can negate the effects of entropy because of a quantum-mechanical principle known as “many object localization.” If a force is felt by one atom in the time crystal, it affects only that atom. Therefore, the change is considered localized rather than global (throughout the system). As a result, the system does not become chaotic and allows the repeating oscillations to continue, theoretically, in perpetuity.

“Everyone knows that perpetual motion machines are impossible,” Samuli Autti, a research fellow and lecturer in physics at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “However, in quantum physics, perpetual motion is okay as long as we keep our eyes closed.”

Autti, who led the research, is referring to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which alludes to how, when a quantum system is observed and measured, its quantum wave function collapses. Because of their quantum mechanical nature, time crystals can operate at 100% efficiency only when fully isolated from their environment. This requirement limits the amount of time they can be observed until they completely break down as a result of wave-function collapse.

However, Autti’s team succeeded in connecting two time crystals by cooling a quantity of helium-3,  an isotope of helium. Helium-3 is special because, when cooled to a fraction above absolute zero (minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 273 degrees Celsius), the isotope becomes a superfluid, which not many materials can do. In a superfluid, there is zero viscosity, so no kinetic energy is lost through friction, thus allowing motions — such as those of the atoms in a time crystal — to continue indefinitely. 

Autti’s team, working at Aalto University in Finland, then manipulated the helium-3 atoms to create two time crystals that interacted with each other. Furthermore, they observed this time-crystal pairing for a record amount of time, about 1,000 seconds (nearly 17 minutes), equating to billions of periods of oscillating or spinning motion of the atoms, before the time crystals’ wave function decayed.

“It turns out, putting two of them together works beautifully,” Autti said.

The findings create a promising line of research for developing a fully functional quantum computer. Whereas the bits of a normal computer are binary — 1s or 0s, on or off — the processing rate of quantum computers is much faster because they utilize ‘qubits,’ which can be 1 and 0, on and off at the same time. One way to build a quantum computer would be to link myriad time crystals, each one designed to act as a qubit. Therefore, this first experiment to link two time crystals has created the basic building block of a quantum computer. 

Previous experiments have already shown that some time crystals can operate at room temperature, rather than needing to be cooled to nearly absolute zero, making their construction even easier. The next task, Autti’s team said, is to demonstrate that logic gate operations, which are functions that allow a computer to process information, can operate between two or more time crystals.

The research was published June 2 in the journal Nature Communications (opens in new tab).

Follow Keith Cooper on Twitter @21stCenturySETI. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.



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Two Time Crystals Have Been Successfully Linked Together For The First Time

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Physicists have just taken an amazing step towards quantum devices that sound like something out of science fiction.

For the first time, isolated groups of particles behaving like bizarre states of matter known as time crystals have been linked into a single, evolving system that could be incredibly useful in quantum computing.

 

Following the first observation of the interaction between two time crystals, detailed in a paper two years ago, this is the next step towards potentially harnessing time crystals for practical purposes, such as quantum information processing.

Time crystals, only officially discovered and confirmed a few years ago in 2016, were once thought to be physically impossible. They are a phase of matter very similar to normal crystals, but for one additional, peculiar, and very special property.

In regular crystals, the atoms are arranged in a fixed, three-dimensional grid structure, like the atomic lattice of a diamond or quartz crystal. These repeating lattices can differ in configuration, but any movement they exhibit comes exclusively from external pushes.

In time crystals, the atoms behave a bit differently. They exhibit patterns of movement in time that can’t be so easily explained by an external push or shove. These oscillations – referred to as ‘ticking’ – are locked to a regular and particular frequency.

Theoretically, time crystals tick at their lowest possible energy state – known as the ground state – and are therefore stable and coherent over long periods of time. So, where the structure of regular crystals repeats in space, in time crystals it repeats in space and time, thus exhibiting perpetual ground state motion.

 

“Everybody knows that perpetual motion machines are impossible,” says physicist and lead author Samuli Autti of Lancaster University in the UK.

“However, in quantum physics perpetual motion is okay as long as we keep our eyes closed. By sneaking through this crack we can make time crystals.”

The time crystals the team have been working with consist of quasiparticles called magnons. Magnons are not true particles, but consist of a collective excitation of the spin of electrons, like a wave that propagates through a lattice of spins.

Magnons emerge when helium-3 – a stable isotope of helium with two protons but just one neutron – is cooled to within one ten thousandth of a degree of absolute zero. This creates what is called a B-phase superfluid, a zero-viscosity fluid with low pressure.

In this medium, time crystals formed as spatially distinct Bose-Einstein condensates, each consisting of a trillion magnon quasiparticles.

A Bose-Einstein condensate is formed from bosons cooled to just a fraction above absolute zero (but not reaching absolute zero, at which point atoms stop moving).

This causes them to sink to their lowest-energy state, moving extremely slowly, and coming together close enough to overlap, producing a high density cloud of atoms that acts like one ‘super atom’ or matter wave.

 

When the two time crystals were allowed to touch each other, they exchanged magnons. This exchange influenced the oscillation of each of the time crystals, creating a single system with an option of functioning in two, discrete states. 

In quantum physics, objects that can have more than one state exist in a mix of those states before they’ve been pinned down by a clear measurement. So having a time crystal operating in a two-state system provides rich new pickings as a basis for quantum-based technologies.

Time crystals are a fair way from being deployed as qubits, as there are a significant number of hurdles to solve first. But the pieces are starting to fall into place.

Earlier this year, a different team of physicists announced that they had successfully created room temperature time crystals that don’t need to be isolated from their ambient surroundings.

More sophisticated interactions between time crystals, and the fine control thereof, will need to be developed further, as will observing interacting time crystals without the need for cooled superfluids. But scientists are optimistic.

“It turns out putting two of them together works beautifully, even if time crystals should not exist in the first place,” Autti says. “And we already know they also exist at room temperature.”

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

 

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Science

Time Crystals “Impossible” but Obey Quantum Physics

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In a new experiment, scientists created two time crystals inside the superfluid, and brought them to touch.

Time crystals were long believed to be impossible because their perpetual motion would seem to defy the laws of physics. However, using quantum physics scientists have not only created time crystals, but they have also now shown that they have the potential to power useful devices in the future.

Scientists have created the first ”time-crystal” two-body system in an experiment that seems to bend the laws of physics.

It comes after the same team recently witnessed the first interaction of the new phase of matter.

“Everybody knows that perpetual motion machines are impossible. However, in quantum physics perpetual motion is okay as long as we keep our eyes closed. By sneaking through this crack we can make time crystals.” — Dr. Samuli Autti

Time crystals were long believed to be impossible because they are made from atoms in never-ending motion. The discovery, published today (June 2, 2022) in the journal Nature Communications, shows that not only can time crystals be created, but they have the potential to be turned into useful devices.

Time crystals are different from a standard crystal – like metals or rocks — which is composed of atoms arranged in a regularly repeating pattern in space.

First theorized in 2012 by Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek and identified in 2016, time crystals exhibit the bizarre property of being in constant, repeating motion in time despite no external input. Their atoms are constantly oscillating, spinning, or moving first in one direction, and then the other.

Researchers cooled superfluid helium-3 to near absolute zero (minus 273.15°C) inside this rotating refrigerator, where two time crystals were created and brought into touch. Credit: © Aalto University/Mikko Raskinen

EPSRC Fellow Dr. Samuli Autti, lead author from Lancaster University’s Department of Physics, explained: “Everybody knows that perpetual motion machines are impossible. However, in quantum physics perpetual motion is okay as long as we keep our eyes closed. By sneaking through this crack we can make time crystals.”

“It turns out putting two of them together works beautifully, even if time crystals should not exist in the first place. And we already know they also exist at room temperature.”

A ”two-level system” is a basic building block of a quantum computer. Time crystals could be used to build quantum devices that work at room temperature.

An international team of researchers from Lancaster University, Royal Holloway London, Landau Institute, and Aalto University in Helsinki observed time crystals by using Helium-3 which is a rare isotope of helium with one missing neutron. The experiment was carried out at Aalto University.

They cooled superfluid helium-3 to about one ten thousandth of a degree from

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US scientists to open crystals that may hold 830-million-year-old living organisms

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American scientists plan to crack open a salt crystal with liquid inside that may contain still-living microorganisms from 830 million years ago, in research that could provide insight into life on other planets.

The salt crystals, called halite, hold liquid from when the mineral originally formed, and scientists observed shapes inside that appear to be microorganisms.

The researchers used imaging techniques to peer into the liquid, and saw what appeared to be organic solids and liquids. The minuscule objects were consistent in size, shape and fluorescent response to algae and prokaryotes, simple single-celled organisms, the researchers said.

The trapped liquids “serve as microhabitats for trapped microorganisms, allowing exceptional preservation of organic matter over long periods of geological time,” the researchers wrote in a paper published earlier this month.

“They could still be surviving within that 830-million-year-old preserved microhabitat,” researcher Kathy Benison told National Public Radio.

Halite crystals form in saline surface waters, and can trap those liquids inside as they grow, including solids that were in the water.

The scientists believe organisms could still be viable in a dormant state inside the crystals, which were discovered in central Australia.

Previous research on extreme environments has found that some organisms can go into “hibernation” to stay alive by suspending biological activities, said Benison, a geologist from West Virginia University.

The researchers plan to open the crystals to confirm whether there is organic, living matter inside the liquid.

They said there is no risk to exposing prehistoric creatures to the modern world.

“It does sound like a really bad B-movie, but there is a lot of detailed work that’s been going on for years to try to figure out how to do that in the safest possible way,” Benison said.

The research paper noted the similarity in the miniature environment to conditions on Mars.

The formation they are studying is a “possible analog for some martian rocks” because both contain similar minerals and other features, the researchers wrote.

“The results of our study suggest the possibility of similar long-term preservation of biosignatures on Mars,” the researchers said. “Microorganisms that may have existed in surface brines on Mars in the ancient past may be trapped as microfossils in chemical sedimentary rocks.”

Living microorganisms have already been extracted from halite from 250 million years ago.

The scientists published a research paper on the halite earlier this month in the peer-reviewed science journal Geology.

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Potentially Alive 830-Million-Year-Old Organisms Found Trapped in Ancient Rock

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An incredible discovery has just revealed a potential new source for understanding life on ancient Earth.

A team of geologists has just discovered tiny remnants of prokaryotic and algal life – trapped inside crystals of halite dating back to 830 million years ago.

 

Halite is sodium chloride, also known as rock salt, and the discovery suggests that this natural mineral could be a previously untapped resource for studying ancient saltwater environments.

Moreover, the organisms trapped therein may still be alive.

The extraordinary study also has implications for the search for ancient life, not just on Earth, but in extraterrestrial environments, such as Mars, where large salt deposits have been identified as evidence of ancient, large-scale liquid water reservoirs.

The organisms don’t look like you might be expecting. Previous ancient microfossils have been found pressed into rock formations, such as shale, dating back billions of years. Salt is not able to preserve organic material in the same way.

Instead, when the crystals are forming in a saltwater environment, small amounts of fluid can be trapped inside. These are called fluid inclusions, and they’re remnants of the parent waters from which the halite crystallized.

This makes them scientifically valuable, since they can contain information about the water temperature, water chemistry and even atmospheric temperature at the time the mineral formed.

 

Scientists have also found microorganisms living in recent and modern environments where halite forms. These environments are extremely salty; nevertheless, microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi and algae have all been found thriving in them.

In addition, microorganisms have been documented in fluid inclusions in gypsum and halite, mostly modern or recent, with a handful dating back to ancient times. However, the method of identifying these ancient organisms has left some doubt as to whether they are the same age as the halite.

“Therefore, a question has persisted amongst geomicrobiologists,” wrote a team led by geologist Sara Schreder-Gomes of West Virginia University. “What are the oldest chemical sedimentary rocks that contain prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms from the depositional environment?”

The middle of Australia is desert now, but it was once an ancient salty sea. The Browne Formation is a well-characterized and dated stratigraphic unit from central Australia, dating back to the Neoproterozoic. It includes extensive halite, indicative of an ancient marine environment.

Using a core sample from the Browne Formation extracted by the Geological Survey of Western Australia in 1997, Schreder-Gomes and her colleagues were able to conduct investigations of unaltered Neoproterozoic halite using nothing but non-invasive optical methods. This left the halite intact; which, importantly, means that anything inside had to have been trapped at the time the crystals formed.

 

They used transmitted-light and ultraviolet petrography, first at low magnification to identify halite crystals, then at up to 2,000x magnification to study the fluid inclusions therein.

Inside, they found organic solids and liquids, consistent with prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, based on their size, shape and ultraviolet fluorescence.

The range of fluorescence was interesting, too. Some of the samples showed colors consistent with organic decay, while others demonstrated the same fluorescence of modern organisms, suggestive, the researchers said, of unaltered organic material.

It’s even possible that some of the organisms are still alive, the researchers noted. The fluid inclusions could serve as microhabitats where tiny colonies thrive. And living prokaryotes have been extracted from halite dating back 250 million years; why not 830 million?

“Possible survival of microorganisms over geologic time scales is not fully understood,” the researchers wrote.

“It has been suggested that radiation would destroy organic matter over long time periods, yet Nicastro et al. (2002) found that buried 250 million-year-old halite was exposed to only negligible amounts of radiation. Additionally, microorganisms may survive in fluid inclusions by metabolic changes, including starvation survival and cyst stages, and coexistence with organic compounds or dead cells that could serve as nutrient sources.”

 

This absolutely has implications for Mars, where deposits can be found that have similar compositions to the Browne Formation, the researchers said. Their research shows how such organisms can be identified without destroying or disrupting the samples, which could give us a new set of tools for identifying them – and better understanding Earth’s own history, too.

“Optical examination should be considered a fundamental step in any study of biosignatures in ancient rocks. It allows geologic context of microorganisms to be known prior to further chemical or biological analyses … and it provides a target for such analyses,” the team wrote.

“Ancient chemical sediments, both of terrestrial and extraterrestrial origin, should be considered potential hosts for ancient microorganisms and organic compounds.”

The research has been published in Geology.

 

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