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| The Babes of Science: Tobler, Fogel, Conrad, Benning, and Eigenbrode |
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| Science deliberations at Jotun Springs 2004 |
Target areas for investigation were set
before each year’s expedition. For the instrument engineers, there is every landform
and slope imaginable, often within easy walking distance from shore. With many
rock types, cold weather, and remote electronic access, the Svalbard
environment put lab-designed instruments to a realistic test. All of the team
was intrigued by the presence of glaciers, permafrost, Arctic rivers, and sea
ice. The polar regions of Mars contain water ice year round. Learning how to
look for signs of life in snow and ice became a major focus in subsequent
years. Svalbard is cold enough to contain ice caps, laminated ice that has
existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. Two geothermal environments,
Troll and Jotun Springs, are the most northern thermal features on land. Troll
Springs built significant calcium carbonate (travertine) deposits forming
terraces that extended over several 100 m.
All of these features were within a distance from our ship that allowed
for relatively easy sampling and collection of specimens as well as field
deployment of instruments.
In 2004, our first sample site was the
Bockfjord Volcanic Complex (BVC) including Sverrefjell volcano, which rose up
from sea level to over 500 m. Vertical lava conduits, some of which are filled
with magnesium-iron-calcium carbonate minerals are relatively rare on Earth.
These rare mineral forms were cemented into lava rocks and were part of the
draw to go to this remote area. Previously, Hans and Allen Treiman found the
rare carbonate minerals in the form of small globules in this Svalbard area
(Amundsen, 1987). The globule-like form is nearly identical in appearance to
similar minerals in the martian meteorite ALH84001—reportedly harboring martian
life (Treiman et al., 2002). Work in 2003 hinted that there was microbial
activity on the layered Mg-carbonate coatings on the BVC lava conduit walls.
Our stable isotope data on carbonates suggested that the coatings were
deposited by low temperature glacial melt-water.
Across the inlet from the BVC were the
high, steep Devonian red beds that looked strikingly like the iron-rich red
rocks of Mars. Although these weren’t as satisfying geologically to us, they
held a certain spell when you climbed these mountains letting you easily
imagine walking on the surface of Mars itself. One year, postdoc researcher
Jake Maule borrowed a prototype space suit and roved the redbeds reminiscent of
Armstrong’s first moonwalk 50 years ago. Maule was interested in entering the
astronaut-training program; a few years prior to his AMASE experience he and I
flew on NASA’s vomit comet to measure how the immune system would work at zero
gravity. We learned that antibodies couple with their complement molecules,
antigens, even easier at zero gravity than they did on Earth.
Near the end of the expedition in 2004,
we hiked at midnight in the land of 24 hour daylight to the Ebbadalen Formation
in Billefjorden, an area that included Carboniferous sediments (about 320
million years old) with calcium-sulfate bearing minerals formed by evaporation
that were deposited from a shallow marine setting. Outcrops contain mixed
sulfate and sedimentary rocks analogous to evaporite sediments studied by the
Mars rover Opportunity. Our team of 20 reached the outcrop at 2 am and swarmed
over the layered rocks, rock hammers out and tapping. We found many sedimentary
deposits hosting structures similar in appearance to the “blueberries” found on
Mars. Clearly this was another example of a Mars analogue site.
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