NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity may have found the building blocks for life on the Red Planet. Research has shown that rocks collected by the rover contain organic carbon that may have come from insects that once roamed Mars.
Sediment analysis from half a dozen places, including an exposed cliff, identified an ancient carbon cycle. The specimens are thought to have a “biological basis”, similar to the fossilized remains of microbial life in Australia from 2.7 billion years ago.
Fossilized microbial life found on Mars
Carbon has two stable isotopes, 12 and 13, and their amounts open a window into its origin. Professor Christopher House, from Penn State University in the US, said: “Samples based on Carbon 13 are similar to samples from 2.7 billion-year-old sediment from Australia. ” said.
Curiosity has been orbiting Gale Crater for over nine years, drilling below the surface and sending results back to Earth. Gale Crater is believed to be a deep 3.5 billion year old lake containing complex organic molecules that are essential raw materials for life.
Curiosity heated the samples in an oxygen-free environment to separate the chemicals. The scans showed that some were exceptionally depleted in carbon 13, while others were enriched.
Other plausible theories include a cloud of cosmic dust or ultraviolet radiation that destroys carbon dioxide. “All three of these scenarios are unusual, unlike processes common on Earth. We are wary of commenting when examining another world. ” said. But he still believes finding traces of microbial organisms could solve things.
NASA’s rover Perseverance, which landed on Mars last February, is now drilling into Mars’ Jezero Crater—another ancient lake is named after—for signs of past life. For scientists, the findings include the goal of measuring different carbon isotopes from sediments on another habitable planet.
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