Colorful, speckled rocks found on the surface of Mars have offered among the most encouraging evidence yet of ancient life on the planet, NASA scientists announced on Wednesday.
The Perseverance Mars rover collected the “Sapphire Canyon” rock samples in July last year from what is thought to be an ancient lakebed, and its poppy seed and leopard-esque spots pointed to potential chemical reactions that piqued the interest of researchers.
If the features resulted from microbial activity that created minerals in the way they do on Earth — well, that might point to life on Mars.
Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Malin Space Science Systems / AFP
It is far too soon for scientists to say that definitively, but the findings, which were detailed in research published in the journal Nature, are alluring.
“We put it out to our scientific friends to pressure test it, to analyze it, and go: ‘Did we get this right? Do we think this is signs of ancient life on Mars?’” NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy told a news conference.
“They said: ‘Listen, we can’t find another explanation.’ So this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars,” he said.
“It’s kind of the equivalent of seeing like leftover fossils, leftovers from a meal, and maybe that meal has been excreted by a microbe,” NASA Science Mission Directorate Administrator Nicky Fox told journalists.
When those kinds of mineral and textured features form in sediment on Earth, it is frequently the product of reactions from mud and organic matter, a potential “biosignature,” or sign of life, the study’s lead author, Joel Hurowitz, said.
Specifically, Perserverance’s instruments identified the minerals vivianite and greigite. On Earth, vivianite is often found in sediments, peat bogs and around decaying organic matter. Some forms of microbial life on Earth can produce greigite.
“But there are nonbiological ways to make these features that we cannot completely rule out on the basis of the data that we collected,” Hurowitz said.
Still, the findings are “exciting,” he told journalists, adding that researchers would need to analyze the sample in person to better understand if microbial activity had created the “fantastic textures,” and colors including blue and green.
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