Fife on Mars?
...no, but there is a St Kilda and a Stonehaven
AT first glance the dusty surface of Mars might seem to bear little similarity to an island in Scotland.
But thanks to the ancestry of one star-gazing scientist, the Red Planet now shares common ground with the Outer Hebrides after she named part of it St Kilda.
The patch of ground was discovered by Nasa’s rover vehicle Curiosity as it explored the area named the ‘Torridon quadrangle’ in a nod to a Wester Ross rock formation.
It joins a string of other sites in the area named after Scottish places including Newmachar and Stonehaven, in Aberdeenshire, and the islands of Arran and Jura. Crystal formations at some of the sites are of a similar age to their Mars counterparts.
Professor Linda Kah, of the University of Tennessee, said she chose the name St Kilda after being inspired by her greatgrandfather George Hastie’s dream of moving his family to the uninhabited island.
Unfortunately the greengrocer from Greenock, Renfrewshire, never achieved his ambition and his son Ian emigrated to the US.
Professor Kah, 50, told the BBC: ‘George was left with five teenagers when his wife, Ann, died in 1931. George proposed buying one of the islands, confident that he and the five kids could manage to survive there.
‘The kids thought he was out of his mind and refused to go. The move to a big cold rock in the sea never happened, and the land was left to the birds.’
She added: ‘It was my Grandpa Ian who first came to the US.
‘My mom Mollie, who was then about four years old, and my Aunt Margaret followed shortly afterwards.’
Professor Kah said the team discovered St Kilda after attempting to survey some ‘mineral veins’, or cracks in the ground where water may once have flowed, using one of Curiosity’s cameras.
The professor, who has even named a pebble on the Red Planet after her son Douglas, explained: ‘The team commonly lets members choose names that are special to them for a target in which they have a particular interest. It allows us all to share something special with our families.’
The Curiosity mission aims to discover if Mars is, or has ever been, capable of supporting life.
Scientists are gradually mapping the planet by dividing it into quadrangles, each measuring one square kilometre.
Professor Kah said that although the St Kilda mineral vein, discovered earlier this month, is just a centimetre wide, it shows signs of once containing two separate water sources.
She added: ‘I only received the first image of it on Sunday so research is at an early stage, but I can already see that it has a lighter edge and darker centre which means there was possibly two fluid streams running through it at some point.’
Scotland’s links with the Nasa Mars missions are well documented. In October 2012 it was announced that Glenelg, Rossshire, was being twinned with a patch of the Red planet.
At the time Emma MacLean, a twinning ceremony organiser, said the link was a good way of keeping the community ‘healthy and vibrant’.
She said: ‘Small communities such as ours are always looking for ways to promote the wide variety of attractions that our community has.
‘The arrival of the Mars rover at Glenelg will be used to showcase to the international astronomy community the quality of the dark skies we have in Glenelg and Arnisdale.
‘With so little light pollution the skies above are truly spectacular.’
‘Share something with our families’