Possible Signs of Life on Mars

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NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has made what could be its most astonishing discovery to date: possible signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/scie ... a909dc4cef
Perseverance drilled into the enigmatic rock to collect a core sample on July 21, as it traversed Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley.

The samples carefully stowed beneath the rover’s belly are destined to eventually return to Earth, where they will undergo more comprehensive analysis.

White calcium sulfate veins run the length of the rock, a telltale sign that water once flowed through it.

Between these veins is a reddish middle area, teeming with organic compounds, as detected by the rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument.


“On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilised record of microbes living in the subsurface,” said David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team from the Queensland University of Technology.

While there are alternative explanations for these findings that do not involve microbes, there is a tantalising chance that Perseverance’s core sample might contain actual fossilised microbes – potentially making history as the first proof of life beyond Earth.