The Moon and Mars give up more secrets
A Chinese and an American mission report their latest results
THIS PICTURE of a set of sedimentary rocks, just published in Science, could have come from any geology textbook. Its illustration of the bottomset-foreset-topset transition found in river deltas is a classic of stratigraphy. Except that, technically, it is not a geological feature at all. The word “geology” derives from the Greek for “Earth discourse”. The rocks in question, however, are on Mars.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Other-worldly”
From the October 9th 2021 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from Science & technology
High-tech antidotes for snake bites
Genetic engineering and AI are powering the search for antivenins
Can you breathe stress away?
Scientists are only beginning to understand the links between the breath and the mind
The Economist’s science and technology internship
We invite applications for the 2025 Richard Casement internship
A better understanding of Huntington’s disease brings hope
Previous research seems to have misinterpreted what is going on
Is obesity a disease?
It wasn’t. But it is now
Volunteers with Down’s syndrome could help find Alzheimer’s drugs
Those with the syndrome have more of a protein implicated in dementia