[X] My Assistant

[Phillip]

Back on August 14, Squyres said:

"We're done with our work in the Voltaire region, having just finished up a pretty thorough IDD investigation of a rock called Assemblee. This thing turned out to have a crazy composition, with by far the highest levels of chromium that we've ever seen on Mars."

Does anyone have any thoughts on what the high levels of chromium tell us? Not being a geologist, I tried to investigate via googling, but came up empty. I would be interested in hearing some thoughts, conjectures or theories.

[dvandorn]

It's that "one way or another" that chromium (or many other elements) got into the rocks that's a telling point, though. And there are several ways you can look at a rock and postulate how such elements got there.

I don't have any data on the implications of this chromium content, but, for example, abundances and forms of sulfur, bromine and chlorine in rocks (both at Gusev and Meridiani) tell us a lot about the amount and type of water that once existed in and around the rocks and soil. The rocks themselves give us strong clues as to the "one way or another" that these elements got into the rocks -- if we can interpret them correctly.

-the other Doug