NASA just announced its perseverance rovers have found some recently On Mars. The rover has obtained billions of years of rock samples from sediments and there are biomarkers that indicate the potential presence of microorganisms.
Basically, rocks contain minerals, usually formed by chemical reactions between mud and organic matter. This does not necessarily mean that Mars once had life, because minerals can form due to non-biological processors. But this is undoubtedly one of the best evidence we have to point to a neighbor planet that once had some kind of living life.
“On Earth, reactions like this combine organic matter and compounds in mud to form new minerals such as Vivia and greenstone, often driven by the activity of microorganisms,” said Joel Hurowitz, a planetary scientist at Stony Brook. . “In these cases, microorganisms are consuming organic matter and producing these new minerals as by-products of their metabolism.”
Horowitz does warn that this is just a potential biosignature, not a practical proof of ancient life. However, many scientists believe that Mars is not always as desolate as it is today.
The Earth may have occupied a lot of water in its distant past. The researchers believe that the area where these samples were persistently discovered was once a valley leading to the lake, although it was 3.5 billion years ago.
sample Collected last yearbut the researchers need time to analyze. Perseverance has been roaming Mars’ surface has been since 2021. Six-wheeled rovers have been collecting rock samples and Regolith and performing this analysis using their onboard instruments. This is just the beginning of the research needed here.
“Ultimately, subsequent research will provide us with a testable set of hypotheses about how to determine whether biology is responsible for the generation of these characteristics,” Hurowitz added.
