Did We Just Discover Unobtanium on Mars?

In James Cameron’s Avatar, the movie’s plot revolves around a single, miraculous material with a very on-the-nose name.

Unobtanium.

Corporations and governments are willing to fight over this rare mineral buried beneath the alien forests of Pandora because of its extraordinary properties.

Of course, unobtanium is fictional.

But every so often, real-life scientists discover something in space that makes you wonder whether nature might actually produce its own version of something similarly exotic.

Like last week, when researchers studying Mars uncovered something unusual hiding inside ancient Martian rocks.

It might not be a miracle substance…

But it’s definitely a new form of matter we’ve never seen before.

The Strange Mineral Hidden in Martian Rocks

The discovery comes from scientists analyzing layered sulfate deposits near Valles Marineris, a massive canyon system that stretches more than 2,500 miles long, up to 120 miles wide and nearly five miles deep across the Martian surface.

Using a combination of laboratory experiments and orbital data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched back in 2005, researchers identified an unusual mineral phase called ferric hydroxysulfate.

In simple terms, they discovered a new crystal form of iron sulfate, a different atomic arrangement of the same basic ingredients. It appears to have formed through a two-step process.

First, ancient water left behind large sulfate deposits more than 3 billion years ago, when Mars still had liquid water on its surface.

Later, volcanic or geothermal heat altered those deposits, transforming their chemistry and creating this new iron-rich compound.

That makes ferric hydroxysulfate interesting to planetary scientists because it tells a story about Mars. It suggests the red planet once had a combination of water, oxygen and heat, which are all conditions associated with hydrothermal environments.

In other words, the kinds of places where life might once have existed.

That alone makes this an exciting find, even though ferric hydroxysulfate is mostly a scientific curiosity at the moment.

Researchers are studying it as a geochemical tracer, which helps reconstruct Mars’ environmental history.

But if scientists manage to synthesize the material in laboratories on Earth, it could potentially behave like other iron hydroxides and sulfates that are already widely used.

And materials in this family already play an important role here on Earth.

Municipal water treatment systems around the world use iron-based compounds to remove contaminants like arsenic and phosphates from drinking water, sometimes eliminating more than 99% of dissolved arsenic. They can also be used to stabilize toxic metals in soil and groundwater and even act as catalysts or absorbent materials in industrial processes.

So ferric hydroxysulfate could eventually prove useful on our planet…

Even if it’s unlikely to revolutionize the economy like unobtanium did in Avatar.

For me, this discovery also raises a fascinating question: If Mars can produce minerals we’ve never seen before, what other unusual substances might exist elsewhere in the solar system?

After all, space has already proven to be full of surprises, as the residents of northern Ohio recently learned.

Over the past few decades, scientists have discovered several materials in meteorites and asteroids that you simply don’t encounter on Earth.

For example, in 2023, scientists analyzing fragments of the Mundrabilla meteorite identified microscopic superconducting alloys composed of lead, indium and tin that lose electrical resistance at temperatures around 5 kelvins, or roughly −450°F.

Image: Wikipedia Commons

These materials can carry electricity without resistance at extremely low temperatures.

They’re not commercially useful yet, but they demonstrate how the extreme environments of space can produce unusual combinations of elements and crystal structures that are rare or unstable on Earth.

Asteroids are another example of how our solar system can produce materials we rarely see on Earth.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Many metal-rich asteroids contain extraordinarily high concentrations of platinum-group metals, including platinum, palladium and rhodium.

Some estimates suggest that a single metallic asteroid about 500 meters wide could contain more platinum than has been mined throughout human history.

Then there are high-pressure mineral phases like the one that was just discovered on Mars.

Laboratory experiments can now simulate pressures of hundreds of gigapascals, comparable to the extreme pressures found near Earth’s core. When scientists recreate this intense pressure, they’ve discovered that familiar elements can take on completely different structures.

Carbon, for instance, can form exotic diamond phases that are far more stable than the diamonds we see at Earth’s surface.

This tells us that nature’s periodic table can become a lot more creative under extreme conditions.

Which means space could contain entire categories of materials we haven’t even imagined yet.

Here’s My Take

On Earth, minerals form under relatively narrow ranges of pressure, temperature and chemistry.

But space offers a far wider playground.

Inside asteroids, metals can slowly crystallize in vacuum for millions or even billions of years. In fact, some meteorites preserve crystals that formed before Earth itself existed.

During planetary impacts, minerals experience pressures higher than those at the center of our planet. And deep within massive worlds, elements are forced into structures that simply can’t survive near Earth’s surface.

These extreme conditions can produce strange alloys, unusual crystal structures and ultra-pure deposits of valuable metals.

Of course, this newly found ferric hydroxysulfate isn’t going to power the next technological revolution.

But while we haven’t found unobtanium yet, space is already showing us that exotic materials are possible.

And discoveries like this Martian mineral are a reminder that our fascination with space isn’t just about satellites and rockets.

It’s also about discovery.

And the more we explore our cosmic neighborhood, the more surprises we’re likely to uncover.

Regards,

Ian KingChief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing

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