ot only was Mars once much more like Earth, with atmosphere, surface water and warmer temperatures, but it had a potentially key ingredient for life that was not available on our home world.
That buttresses a mind-bending theory that life got its start on Mars and then spread to Earth, said biochemist Steven Benner, with the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Fla.
August 29th, 2013
Did Life Start on Mars? Discovery News
August 28th, 2013
‘We are all Martians’: Chemist’s otherworldly claim stirs debate NBC News
Are we all Martians? A controversial hypothesis contends that life on our planet had to get its start somewhere else — most likely on Mars — because the chemistry on early Earth couldn’t have provided the required molecular machinery.
“The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock,” Steven Benner, a chemist at the Florida-based Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, said in a news release. What’s more, recent studies suggest that the conditions suitable for the origin of life “may still exist on Mars,” he said.
August 5th, 2013
Curiosity’s Hard-Working Year on Mars Pays Off With Amazing Scientific Discoveries Wired
NASA’s Curiosity rover is a gigantic mobile laboratory. During the last year, it has roved over the Martian surface exploring a small section of Gale crater while making huge scientific discoveries.
The rover was built as a data-generating machine. You put rocks, air, and samples in and you get science out. Specifically, Curiosity is searching for signs of ancient habitability and seeking to answer an important question: Could Mars have ever had living organisms crawling over its surface?
Curiosity’s science team includes geologists, chemists, physicists, astrobiologists, and countless other researchers. Using the probe’s state-of-the-art equipment, they have drilled into Martian rocks, fired lasers and X-rays, baked powdered soil for analysis, and sniffed the atmosphere. Many of these activities had never been done on the Red Planet, or any planet beyond Earth, before. The data received from Curiosity has bolstered the idea that the planet once had water flowing over its surface and was a place where life could have conceivably thrived. It will take many more months and years of exploring to completely tease out all the details but the rover has already exceeded the expectations of its original designers.
July 2nd, 2013
ESA Euronews: The Mars detectives
Europe’s off to Mars. Again. We have sent robots to fly over Mars, crawl over Mars and soon to dig down into Mars – searching for signs that once, perhaps deep in the past, this planet may have been home to life. It might be an obvious choice, but still a puzzle, and one that we’re only just beginning to piece together. And finding evidence of life will require the skill of the finest detectives.
This is a mystery that Europe’s ExoMars mission is ready to solve. In 2016 it will have a satellite in orbit around Mars, designed to test for methane, and by 2018 this rover will be rolling around the Red Planet. The mission will be the first to set out with the direct intention of finding signs of life, now, and in the past.
June 14th, 2013
In Hawaii, as on Mars, Lava Tubes Hide Secrets Beneath the Surface Discover
Thanks to satellite imagery, we now know that both Mars and the moon also have lava tubes and skylights. These caves and holes likely formed the same way they do on Earth.
As a channel of molten lava flows, its top layer, exposed to air, cools and forms a crust. Below, the hotter lava continues to course until it empties out, leaving behind a tube-like cave. Skylights form when parts of the lava tube ceiling collapse. Sometimes these ceilings crumble and completely block access to the cave. Other times, they fall away clean, leaving pits with dangerous, potentially unstable overhangs. But once in a while, the rocks fall in such a way to give unfettered access to a lava-carved tunnel.
March 28th, 2013
Why a Mars Comet Impact Would be Awesome Discovery News
When Jupiter’s tides ripped Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 to shreds, only for the icy chunks to succumb to the intense Jovian gravity, ultimately slamming into the gas giant’s atmosphere, mankind was treated to a rare cosmic spectacle (in human timescales at least). That was the first time in modern history that we saw a comet do battle with a planet… and lose.
But next year, astronomers think there’s a chance — albeit a small one — of a neighboring planet getting punched by an icy interplanetary interloper. However, this planet doesn’t have a generously thick atmosphere to soften the blow. Rather than causing bruises in a dense, molecular hydrogen atmosphere, this comet will pass through the atmosphere like it wasn’t even there and hit the planetary surface like a cosmic pile-driver, ripping into the crust.
What’s more, we’d have robotic eyes on the ground and in orbit should the worst happen.
March 12th, 2013
NASA Rover Finds Conditions Once Suited for Ancient Life on Mars
An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes.
Scientists identified sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon — some of the key chemical ingredients for life — in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.
“A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have supported a habitable environment,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “From what we know now, the answer is yes.”
December 4th, 2012
Opportunity Rover Finds Mars Minerals That Formed in Life-Friendly Water Wired
While attention has been focused on the Mars rover Curiosity, NASA’s other active Mars rover, Opportunity, has quietly been going about its business and may have stumbled across an intriguing new geologic puzzle. Opportunity has begun examining ancient clays on Mars that would have formed in the presence of water with neutral acidity, a condition favorable for life as we know it.
“This is our first glimpse ever at an ancient Mars where conditions would be suitable for life,” said astronomer Steve Squyres of Cornell University, the lead scientist for Opportunity’s mission, here at the American Geophysical Union conference on December 4, 2012
December 3rd, 2012
Mars rover finds simple organics, but results not yet conclusive cnet
Despite widespread speculation about a potentially significant discovery on Mars, the Curiosity rover’s first detailed look at a Martian soil sample with an instrument capable of detecting organic compounds hasn’t found any “definitive” signs of materials that play key roles in biological processes on Earth, scientists said Monday.
While the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument detected signs of an oxygen-chlorine compound — perchlorate — and trace amounts of chlorinated methane compounds, which contain carbon, researchers say more tests are needed to make sure the carbon originated with the sample and was not brought to Mars aboard Curiosity.
October 29th, 2012
Manned mission to Mars could threaten life on the Red planet The Economic Times
It could be decades before man steps foot on Mars, but scientists have warned that if he ever does, he’ll bring with him trillions of tiny invaders that pose danger of contaminating the Red planet.
Scientists say a swarming mass of 100 trillion microbes will travel with every astronaut who may land on Mars.
While these microbes have evolved over thousands of years to help humans do everything from digesting their food to keeping bacteria from killing them, there’s no telling how they might interact with the Martian environment, the Daily Mail reported.