Life on Mars: NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds Intriguing Carbon Signatures on the Red Planet

Scientists are being cautious and aren't assuming a direct connection yet between the discovery and actual life on Mars.

By Edited by Gadgets 360 Newsdesk | Updated: 20 January 2022 14:10 IST

Life on Mars: NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds Intriguing Carbon Signatures on the Red Planet

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Curiosity has been collecting powdered rock samples on Mars

Highlights

Carbon is a key element on Earth
The carbon signature may hold vital information about Mars' environment
Scientists, however, are being cautious

NASA said its Curiosity rover, looking for signs of life on Mars' Gale Crater, has found intriguing carbon signatures. While this is no definite suggestion that Curiosity has found proof of ancient microbial life, it does, however, suggest its possibility. The rover has been collecting powdered rock samples on the Red Planet's surface. When scientists analysed them, they found several of the samples were rich in a type of carbon that is associated with biological processes on Earth, the space agency said. Carbon is a key element on Earth and could hold vital information about the Martian environment.

Scientists do not want to get ahead of themselves and are maintaining that they are yet to find conclusive supporting evidence of life — such as sedimentary rock formations produced by ancient bacteria or diversity of complex organic molecules formed by life on Mars. They also caution that the two planets are very different and Earth examples should not be extrapolated to Mars.

Samsung Wins Patent for a Tri-Fold Smartphone With Specialised Barrier Layer for Improved Durability

Curiosity scientists published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal on January 18. In this paper, the scientists have offered several explanations for the “unusual carbon signals” they detected. In a blog post, NASA said the biological explanation in the paper is inspired by life on Earth. Two other hypotheses offer non-biological explanations. One of them says the carbon signature could have been a result of interaction between ultraviolet light and carbon dioxide gas. The other suggests that the carbon could have been left behind from a rare event hundreds of millions of years ago when the solar system passed through a giant molecular cloud.

China's Tianwen-1 Mars Probe Captures Stunning Selfies

“We're finding things on Mars that are tantalizingly interesting, but we would really need more evidence to say we've identified life,” said Paul Mahaffy, who served as a principal investigator of a chemistry lab aboard Curiosity until his retirement in December 2021. “So we're looking at what else could have caused the carbon signature we're seeing, if not life.”

Why are Galaxy S21 FE and OnePlus 9RT launching now? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.