(Web Desk) - NASA has uncovered major new clues on Mars that could point to alien life.
The space agency’s rover has found chemicals on the Red Planet that are widely considered the key ingredients for the origin of life on Earth. Curiosity has been scouring Mars for over a decade now in hope of answering one of humanity’s biggest mysteries.
Now the bot has carried out a groundbreaking chemical experiment for the first time on another world.
The significant results show that the Martian surface can preserve the kinds of molecules that could serve as signs of ancient life.
However, they’re not able to figure out how they got there and definitively identifying signs of past life would need the rock samples to be brought back to Earth for further analysis.
“We think we’re looking at organic matter that’s been preserved on Mars for 3.5 billion years,” said Professor Amy Williams, from University of Florida and a scientist on the Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rover missions.
“It’s really useful to have evidence that ancient organic matter is preserved, because that is a way to assess the habitability of an environment.
“And if we want to search for evidence of life in the form of preserved organic carbon, this demonstrates it’s possible.”
More than 20 chemicals were detected during the experiment.
The one that’s caught the attention of scientists is described as a nitrogen-bearing molecule, with a structure similar to DNA precursors.
They also detected a substance known as benzothiophene which usually finds its way onto planets from meteorites.
It’s never been spotted on Mars before.
“The same stuff that rained down on Mars from meteorites is what rained down on Earth, and it probably provided the building blocks for life as we know it on our planet,” Professor Williams added.
“We now know that there are big complex organics preserved in the shallow subsurface of Mars, and that holds a lot of promise for preserving large complex organics that might be diagnostic of life.”
The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications.