Tuesday, December 17, 2013

How Soil Instruments Helps Find Life on Earth, And Beyond

If you believe that it is only the earth that takes benefit from the many technologies made by man, then you may change your perceptions after reading this one. Soil instrument has application in analyzing soil content that helps scientists predict the sustainability of that soil for activities such as growing crops.

It comes out that even Curiosity – the rover sent on Mars to explore the lands of the barren planet has a similar device fitted in its belly. The job of the device is same as that done on earth by these devices; it also has analyzed soil and sent data to the base station on earth.

If you look in the past, the astronomy segment of science was pretty excited to find water content on the soil of the planet. Well, if the instrument was not present, these geniuses may have never found about the presence of the most fundamental component of life on the red planet.

The positive result of water presence has raised speculations of whether Mars harbored life in the past. The sample that was analyzed claimed that the soil of Mars has around 2 per cent of water, a quantity enough to harbor unicellular life at the very least.

The instrument fitted in the rover has software that enables it to check for presence of various compounds that might be present in a soil instruments sample. With such a high scale of precision, these devices are sure to get huge credits in the near future.