Research 2006
Creating a Little Mars on Earth
Ed Cloutis
Professor of Geography /
Director of the Centre for Forest Interdisciplinary Research
When Professor Ed Cloutis began studying minerals on Mars, he was faced with a puzzle. Although Mars minerals were similar to those found on Earth, several minerals were unexpectedly absent from Mars.
“So that got me thinking,” says Cloutis. “When you take certain minerals and expose them to Mars conditions, maybe they turn into something else.” To test his theory, Cloutis decided to create a little Mars on Earth.
Mars has a very low atmospheric pressure and a carbon dioxide atmosphere, unlike Earth’s, which is nitrogen and oxygen. Mars has no ozone layer, so the surface is exposed to intense ultraviolet radiation. At temperatures averaging -60ºC, this is a hostile environment.
“Right now, if you had a glass of water on Mars, part of it would freeze, but most of it would sublimate—it would turn into a gas right away and go into the atmosphere,” says Cloutis.
Cloutis and his students finished building the two Mars Environment (ME) chambers in 2005. Mini-ME is the size of a Coke can. Big-ME is about the size of a two-drawer file cabinet.
By placing different Earth minerals in an ME chamber, Cloutis hopes to learn why certain minerals are absent on Mars. Other research will address why Mars is such a dry planet and why Mars, which was once a warmer and wetter place, evolved so differently from Earth.
“Since we can’t go into a time machine back 4.5 billion years, we’re going to try to backtrack from what we see now,” says Cloutis. “The work we’re doing here will give us a picture of what the geology of Mars is like right now. When we understand that better, then we can say, ‘OK these are the possible paths that Mars could have taken over last 4.5 billion years.’”
Because this is the only Mars chamber in the world, Cloutis collaborates with colleagues in the United States, Europe, and Canada who are working on Mars space missions. One Canadian researcher will use the chamber to determine if Earth microbes can survive on Mars.
“It’s driven by science,” says Cloutis. “We’ve got the only facility of its kind in the world and we’re doing research that nobody else is doing. That’s pretty cool.”
To learn more about his research on Mars, contact University of Winnipeg faculty member Ed Cloutis at e.cloutis@uwinnipeg.ca