Mossbauer spectroscopy was discovered in 1957 by a man named Rudolph Mossbauer, who later won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1961. Mossbauer spectroscopy can be used in a wide range of sciences including, chemistry, biology and metallurgy. Its main purposes are giving precise information about chemical, structural, magnetic and time-dependent properties of a material. The Mossbauer spectroscopy is a spectroscopic technique based on the Mossbauer Effect. The most common form of Mossbauer spectroscopy is Absorption spectroscopy, where a solid sample is exposed to a beam of gamma radiation and a detector measures the intensity of the beam that is transmitted through the sample. Using this method the gamma-ray energy is varied by accelerating the gamma-ray source through a range of speeds with a linear motor. The motion between the source and sample results in an energy shift because of the Doppler Effect, which is the change in frequency or wavelength of a wave which is watched by an observer that is moving relative to the source of the waves. In order for absorption to occur the gamma-ray must have the right energy for the nuclear transitions of the atoms being probed. The gamma-ray energy should also be relatively low, or the system will have a low recoil-free fraction which will result in a poor signal to noise ratio. Since the criteria is so high for these elemental isotopes, there are few that actually work out. Therefore Mossbauer spectroscopy can only be used towards a small group of atoms including 57Co, 57Fe, 129I, 119Sn, 121Sb, with 57Fe being the most common of the atoms studied. In the article, A Wet Early Mars Seen in Salty Deposits, the talk about using the Mossbauer spectroscopy on mars to determine whether or not there was any water there before. Using the machine the fires gamma-rays at the atoms to detect what kind elements existed. What they came up with was I, Fe, which is found in jarosite.
