A team of NASA-funded researchers study some of Australia's oldest landscapes to help answer big questions about the universe.
The NASA-funded researcher says the otherworldly landscape, with its pink-hued water and fringing trees, is no mere illusion — it is more like Mars than almost any other location on Earth."We're out here studying examples of what we think ancient Mars might have been like," she tells the ABC from the shoreline of Lake Warden, near Esperance.
"Our team is really interested in how hypersaline environments — so those places that have lots of salt in them — not only function as ecosystems today on Earth, but how they preserve a record of what once went on here," she said.A place like nowhere else on Earth Dr Schmidt said its three-billion-year-old rocks are some of the oldest on Earth and about the same age as those on Mars.
"By studying examples of what we think may have happened on other planets, we get a chance to understand what those environments may have once been like," she said."These are old rocks, so the water that's been working through these rocks has been present for a long amount of time.Dr Schmidt also said tapping into rich sources of local knowledge helped strengthen the team's research.
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