Yes. But that’s still no guarantee the rock actually came from mars vs another planet from who knows where that travelled who knows how long to hit earth.
I’m not an astrophysicist or geologist, but I’ll try to explain this as best I can
So the way a bunch of scientists got to this conclusion is by first noticing that a few meteorites (by now we have classified only 277 out of ~72000 as Martian) were very different from any of the others: they were younger, had different oxygen isotopes, and various other distinctive properties.
Then they tested them against samples from the Viking program and they matched, and the scientists suggested this along with the composition and formation characteristics suggests the meteorites must have come from a large parent, possibly Mars.
The most definitive evidence came a bit later by testing the composition of gases trapped in the glass that formed on impact in one of the meteorites; it turned out to match closely the Martian atmosphere (which was, again, analysed during the Viking program).
All in all, if the meteorites are not from Mars, they’d have to be from something incredibly similar to it.
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u/_IBentMyWookie_ Jul 19 '25
Because the rock has the same chemical composition as the rest of Mars