early life on Mars



Relatively simple experiments aboard future landers or sample-return missions to Mars could be used to test for life on the Red Planet. As opposed to organic compounds, minerals could reveal the presence of ancient life on Mars, a new study reports.



Some evidence suggests that Mars in its first hundred million years was warm and wet. And this evidence raises the possibility that the planet could have fostered life. But, when the two Viking landers studied the planet’s soil in the 1970s, neither of them found organic molecules.



But, according to the new finding, inorganic compounds, which tend to survive longer than their organic counterparts, may act as “tracers of biological activity”. This research is led by Fabien Stalport of the University of Paris in France. To test their idea, they studied the mineral calcite, which is the crystallised form of calcium carbonate.



Via: New Scientist