Are there signs of
life on Mars?
Mars was thought
to be a planet that had never had life, in
spite of the canals that were supposed to have made by Martians.
Burt we know there were no Martians.
Here is a new study:
“NASA’s
Perseverance rover has found a rock riddled with what may be signs of ancient
life. The
rock, nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” after a famous waterfall in Arizon a, shows
hints that it could have supported living microbes billions of years ago – but
for now, there is no way to be sure if life really existed there.
The rock measures about 1 metre by 0.6 metres and is
mostly reddish, with thin veins of white calcium sulphate that probably formed
when water
flowed through fissures in the rock, depositing minerals in the
cracks. Water is one of the ingredients necessary for life, but it wasn’t the
only one that researchers found while poring over the Perseverance data.
They saw that between the streaks of white, there were
strange light-coloured splotches, each just millimetres across and ringed with
dark material containing iron and phosphate. “These spots are a big surprise,”
said David
Flannery at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia in a
NASA press
release. “On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated
with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface.” That is
because the type of chemical reaction that creates these sorts of leopard spots on Earth rocks can also
provide useful energy for microbes.”
But only God has
the capacity to create life.
Leah Crane.
2024. Mars rover found a rock with possible signs of ancient life | New Scientist 25 July
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