NASA confirms we have evidence of life on Mars billions of years ago
NASA says its Perseverance rover has found a new rock sample on Mars that could hold clues to life billions of years ago.
The spacecraft found an intriguing arrowhead-shaped rock that contains chemical signatures and structures that may have been formed by microbial life billions of years ago, when Mars was significantly wetter than it is today.
Inside the rock, which scientists have dubbed Chiava Falls, Perseverance's instruments have detected organic compounds, a precursor to the chemistry of life as we know it.
Chiava Falls lies on the edge of an ancient river valley 400 metres wide called the Neretva Valles.
The rock shows long streaks of calcium sulfate, a mineral deposit that suggests water once flowed through the rock.
The spacecraft also found dozens of millimeter-sized spots, each surrounded by a black ring that mimics the appearance of a tiger.
These rings contain iron and phosphate, which are also seen on Earth as a result of chemical reactions driven by microbes.
"These spots are a big surprise," said David Flannery, an astrobiologist and Perseverance science team member from Queensland University of Technology in Australia, in a statement. "These types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossil record of microbes living deep underground."
“We’ve never seen these three elements together on Mars before,” Morgan Cable, a Perseverance team scientist, said in a video posted by NASA on YouTube on July 25.
However, it is too early to know whether the large rock holds the answer to questions that have long puzzled scientists.
According to Russia Today, scientists assumed that the black and white spots may simply be caused by a chemical reaction that has nothing to do with living organisms.
NASA hopes to bring samples of Chiwafa Falls back to Earth for further research in the coming years.
Source: websites