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Last week, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover modeled an arrowhead-shaped rock that held tantalizing clues to the presence of ancient microscopic life. Although the evidence so far is compelling, scientists in charge of the project are quick to caution that more research, which could come with the pattern’s return to Earth’s laboratories, is needed to determine whether life was discovered on Mars.
Perseverance stumbled upon this intriguing rock, nicknamed “Cheyava Falls,” on July 21 while exploring the northern edge of the Neretva Vallis, a quarter-mile-wide river channel created billions of years ago. years when water flowed into the nearby Jezero Crater.
“Cheyava Falls is the most puzzling, complex, and potentially the most potentially studied rock ever studied through Perseverance,” Ken Farley, a geochemist at the California Institute of Technology and Perseverance project investigator, said in a NASA statement.
Was Mars home to microscopic life in the remote past?An intriguing rock discovered through @NASAPersevere has qualities that match the definition of an imaginable indicator of ancient life. But what do we find and how will we be safe?https://t. co/vMJScXhqYy pic. twitter. com/KZUIHWwxDY
The rock measures only 3 to 2 feet, but within its limited domain lie three imaginable symptoms of ancient life.
First, Perseverance discovered long white veins of calcium sulfate, a mineral likely deposited through running water, that cross the reddish surface of the rock. The presence of calcium sulfate bolsters the theory that Neretva Vallis and Jezero Crater were once abundant in water and hospitable. to life.
The rover also detected dozens of millimeter-sized white spots on the rock, surrounded by a black ring with a trend reminiscent of a leopard’s spots.
“These spots are a big surprise,” says David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team from Queensland University of Technology in Australia. “On Earth, those kinds of features in rocks are related to fossil archives of microbes that live underground. “
Using PIXL, an X-ray tool installed on the rover, NASA researchers found that the black rings contained iron and phosphate. These products are indicative of chemical reactions with hematite, one of the minerals that give Mars its unique red color, which may have provided an energy source for microbial life.
“Let’s be cautiously enthusiastic but pragmatically moderate,” said Paul Byrne, a planetary geologist at the University of Washington in St. John’s. Louis, who is not involved in the rover project, to New Scientist’s Leah Crane. “At the moment, this is a sign that the rain rocks are (probably) undergoing chemical weathering. “
Finally, after scanning the rock, Perseverance discovered biological compounds using its SHERLOC instrument. Organic compounds are symptoms of carbon-based life, but scientists warn that they can rarely be formed by non-biological processes.
“What we have is that we have a possible biosignature on Mars,” Kathryn Stack Morgan, one of the mission’s principal investigators, told Kenneth Chang of the New York Times.
Each of these symptoms is attractive on its own, but locating all three combined on the same rock is unheard of and makes a strong case for life. However, the researchers emphasize that the full history of these life symptoms is unknown and they have not yet noticed fossilized organisms or other definitive evidence.
“On the one hand, we have our first convincing detection of biological matter, unique colored spots that indicate chemical reactions that microbial life can use simply as an energy source, and clear evidence that water, necessary for life, once passed through the rock. Farley adds in the statement that, on the other hand, we were not able to determine precisely how the rock was formed and to what extent nearby rocks could have heated Cheyava Falls and contributed to those features.
In one conceivable scenario for its formation, the Cheyava Falls began as mud, already filled with biological compounds, before those parts were transported to the Neretva Valley through water and cemented into the rock over time. Water then seeped into cracks in the forged rock, creating veins of calcium sulfate and allowing the chemical reactions that left the leopard spots.
But the presence of olivine, a mineral formed from magma, complicates this story. Instead, olivine from Cheyava Falls suggests a situation in which the black and white spots on the rock were produced through an abiotic chemical reaction that occurs at “uninhabitable temperatures. “”, according to the statement.
Although Perseverance’s discovery advances the possible search for ancient life on Mars, the rover’s ability to answer those remaining questions is limited.
“We destroyed this rock with lasers and x-rays and photographed it literally day and night from almost every angle imaginable,” Farley said in the statement. “Scientifically, Perseverance has nothing more to contribute. “
Instead, scientists hope to get a closer look at the rock. A core taken from Cheyava Falls has been added to Perseverance’s collection of patterns to take to laboratories on Earth. But until NASA irons out the details, budget and timeline of its controversial, expensive and still dubious Mars return-to-sample project, mysteries about life on the Red Planet will remain.
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