Perseverance has uncovered unusual, basalt-rich Martian spherules that likely formed in violent explosions—either from meteors or lava.

Spherule beds as thin as that have yet to be detected on ancient terrains. The known ancient beds argue for an intense, protracted phase of late terrestrial bombardment 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

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The team are now working to link the spherule-rich texture observed at St. Pauls Bay to the wider stratigraphy at Witch Hazel Hill, and initial observations have provided tantalizing indications ...

The millimeter-scale gray circles are all formerly molten droplets ejected into space when an asteroid struck the Earth about 2.56 billion years ago. These droplets, known as impact spherules ...

Spherule layers — such as the one shown in this 5-centimeter, 2.6-billion-year-old sample from Australia — are markers of ancient collisions.

Sir David, 95, recalled the “electric moment” when tests showed the chemical profile of a “spherule” matched that of the asteroid.

The total length of viral filaments within the spherules was measured, revealing an approximate length of 18,600 ± 2900 Å and 21,400 ± 1600 Å per spherule (Figure 2B), which is equivalent to ...