SCIENTISTS have claimed that a mysterious black rock from Mars suggests that aliens could have bathed in hot springs on the planet over four billion years ago.
New research seems to have found the oldest evidence in existence of hot water on Mars, suggesting it may have been habitable in the distant past.
A team at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, analysed a sample of a martian meteorite known as “black beauty”.
Their latest study examined a grain of zircon, the black crystal that makes up part of the rock.
They managed to date the sample to a whopping 4.45 billion years ago, from around the same time the Earth is thought to have formed.
Even more significantly, though, the study found “fingerprints” of water in the grain, which suggests the presence of hot water on the Red Planet.
This is believed to have been present in the form of hydrothermal springs heated by magma from under the planet’s crust.
Similar springs were, according to scientists, crucial to the development of life on Earth.
This would indicate that the martian environment may have held the potential to support alien life in its ancient form.
Dr Aaron Cavosie, who co-authored the study, said: “We used nano-scale geochemistry to detect elemental evidence of hot water on Mars 4.45 billion years ago.
“Hydrothermal systems were essential for the development of life on Earth and our findings suggest Mars also had water, a key ingredient for habitable environments, during the earliest history of crust formation.
“Through nano-scale imaging and spectroscopy, the team identified element patterns in this unique zircon, including iron, aluminium, yttrium and sodium.
“These elements were added as the zircon formed 4.45 billion years ago, suggesting water was present during early Martian magmatic activity.
“This new study takes us a step further in understanding early Mars, by way of identifying tell-tale signs of water-rich fluids from when the grain formed, providing geochemical markers of water in the oldest known Martian crust.”
It comes after SunTech rounded up six of the most mysterious sights ever spotted on Mars.
These included an eerie statue and a vast doorway-like structure, which some have claimed as evidence of alien civilisation.
