What has Cabeço de Vide in Alentejo, the planet Mars and the area of Cedars, in the United States in common?
Rocks is the right answer. According to several exhaustive studies carried out by scientists from NASA to the meteorite fragments that over the years have been fallen in various parts of our planet and some of the Martian rocks, they all have elements and hydrogeological characteristics similar to rocks that we can find in the Cabeço de Vide and the termal area of Cedars, in USA. According to scientists from the US space agency the information collected from these space debris was related to data obtained by the probes that were on the red planet and that will now be complemented by the work of the Curiosity robot, which is currently conducting a mission of two years on Mars.
Analyses carried out in the Alentejo town confirm that the local waters have a specific composition and a characteristic smell and because of its various components, the waters have a pH of 11.5, being considered unic at European level and only comparable to those occurring in north mountain -American and the evidence of water on Mars detected by scientists. Based on this information, the American astrophysicist Steve Vance, from the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) NASA began a collaboration with researchers from Petrology Center and Geochemistry of the Technical Faculty of Lisbon that will relate and analyze three of these elements rock types and their waters, which may unravel the mysteries of the origin of life on Earth and other planets.
