Known non-biological sources, from meteorites to surface chemistry, fall short of accounting for organic compounds detected by NASA’s Curiosity rover, according to a new study published in the journal Astrobiology.
Study : https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15311074261417879
Does the Measured Abundance Suggest a Biological Origin for the Ancient Alkanes Preserved in a Martian Mudstone ?
Mars Organics Can’t Be Fully Explained by Geological Processes Alone, NASA Study Says
3 Comments
Yeah, but does this mean that the building blocks of organic (carbon-based) life are fairly common in the universe? Mars may have been a failed garden world, but others may be out there.
I think as this comes to fruition both this discovery and cheyava falls will turn out to be our very first evidence of life outside of earth. It’ll be amazing too as we confirm it
Fascinating. I wonder if you could use this to argue that Mars had conditions conducive to life but never quite got there. That is, it had the “primordial soup” of chemicals ready to support life but the process either didn’t get started, or if it did, the conditions were too short lived and it never had a real chance due to the conditions on Mars being too unstable.