Mars Harbors Building Blocks Of Life

Organic molecules found by the Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater on Mars are more varied than those previously found in Gale Crater by Curiosity and in meteorites knocked off Mars, Stephen Luntz reported for IFL Science.

Photo Insert: Perseverance exposes its samples to deep ultraviolet radiation to observe the wavelengths at which they fluoresce, indicating their composition.

“We report specific fluorescence-mineral associations consistent with many classes of organic molecules occurring in different spatial patterns within these compositionally distinct formations,” the authors of a study published by Nature wrote, “potentially indicating different fates of carbon across environments.”

Perseverance exposes its samples to deep ultraviolet radiation to observe the wavelengths at which they fluoresce, indicating their composition. Based on this, the authors estimate organic compounds make up 20 parts per million of the Máaz formation, but just 2ppm of Séítah.

Most importantly, “Key building blocks for life may have been present over an extended period of time (from at least roughly 2.3–2.6 billion years ago)."

A biological source for the molecules may be unlikely, although the paper says it can’t be ruled out, but the presence of these materials makes it more likely for it to have got started somewhere on Mars at some point.

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