Official News page 11

REAL LIFE NEWS: MARTIAN OPALS REALLY DO EXIST

by Hazed

Way back in the 1980s (was it really that long ago? Yes it was!) when Alan was writing the game, he had to come up with objects to scatter around on the Solar System planets. One of the things he put in the heart of the Martian ruins, in an ancient treasure chamber, was an opal.

This was either a very lucky guess, some inspired deduction, or clairvoyance - because now a NASA space probe orbiting the planet has discovered deposits of opals in the Valles Marineris canyon system.

This discovery is significant because it suggests that liquid water existed on Mars a billion years more recently than had been thought. Until lately, scientists though that liquid water had last disappeared from the Martian surface at least three billion years ago, but the new opal finds have caused them to revise the date of the Great Drying, bringing it forward by a billion years.

"We see numerous outcrops of opal-like minerals, commonly in thin layers extending for very long distances around the rim of Valles Marineris and sometimes within the canyon system itself," said Ralph Milliken of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Opals are not valuable enough to make this discovery of anything other than scientific interest, but they are very pretty gemstones. Here's a collection of pictures.

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