News / 01 January, 2020
Extreme living conditions
A window into Martian life
The sun rises over this spectacular scenery. The lone traveller begins his early walk around this barren land. Warm red and yellow colours begin to fill the space through the emerging light. The rusty soil of the deserted landscape does not apparently show any life. Running by the rocks, the River Tinto (Stained River) means to be the only sign of life. Maybe not, its reddish waters flow crossing an alien terrain.
A vision comes to his mind while looking directly to the sun: What has happened to life in Earth? , wonders the voyager. Where am I?
“ Visions of another world”
Land appears to have been scraped with huge machinery. After a morning walk he discovers huge craters and mountains of discarded minerals. At the top of one of these craters, an open-pit mine, he realizes that there is a big serenity around: silence, no trees, no birds, just small plants growing here and there. Just small insects, strong survivors down the scorching midday sun.
Taking pictures of this stunning contrast between life and the inert soil, he forgets again where he is....
He decides to follow again the snaking river. Gradually the coloured water incites him to admire its rare beauty. He thinks that this colour is no good for life. Is there any living being in these waters? Flowing water has created a diversity of forms, textures and graded colours, from dark red, to pale yellow. The vision again....he is travelling around a land where the river is the artist. Its fanciful flowing creates art....the visitor can´t stop shooting and catching all these pieces of art with his camera. A little blue flower floating on the water...a dry pinecone mid-sunken in de mud...again he loses the sense of time. The sun is coming down and its golden rays spread over this sterile world.
But life really exists on those acid waters; there are many extremophiles (small micro-organisms that live in extreme conditions, in this case extreme acidity). Rio Tinto is a site of pilgrimage and study for astrobiologists. This is due to the region´s characteristic mineralogy and water chemistry, which resemble the environment of ancient Mars, or the future Earth.
When he falls asleep, he dreams about the Artist River Tinto summoning him: ‘Let’s start with the first lesson of art....’
