Martian Scientists Unearth Ancient Organic Compounds, Aged Similarly to Life Forms on Earth
Hanging out on the fourth celestial rock from the Sun, Mars has traditionally been a real buzzkill. Kraken temperatures, a paper-thin atmosphere, and an apparent scarcity of liquid H2O make it a pretty unwelcoming neighborhood for Earthlings. However, recent findings by a team of dope scientists have upended our understanding of the Red Planet, adding it to the list of potential venues for extraterrestrial life.
Y’all know how it is with scientists – they’re always sniffing around for new stuff, and Mars happens to be their latest dig. It turns out that these scientists have come across the longest organic molecules they've ever seen on ol’ Red, raising questions about whether biology was booty-bouncing on an ancient Mars.
The molecules in question are carbon chains, and some of them pack as many as 12 consecutive atoms of carbon. These babies have been sitting pretty on Mars for about 3.7 billion years, still fresh as a daisy despite the cosmic party happening around them. The age of these chains is comparable to the earliest-known signs of life on our own planet, leading some brilliant minds to wonder if Mars might have been the Silicon Valley of biology back in the day.
Researchers have been chasing the almighty carbon for years, and they've hinted at the importance of this element in creating the perfect environment for creating bonds between molecules – like DNA and RNA, for instance. A French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) release revealed that these carbon chains have features similar to fatty acids produced on Earth by, well, biological activity.
While the discovery of these organic molecules doesn’t necessarily prove that life once lived it up on Mars, it does suggest that the building blocks necessary for life as we know it were abundant and stubborn, hanging around for the ages without getting destroyed by either geological activity, moisture, or heat. Could it be that Mars was once the ideal spot for life to evolve?
The research team, which included CNRS scientists and folks from other institutions, made its findings using the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory aboard NASA's regular Mars crawler, Curiosity. SAM is essentially the mad scientist's laboratory in a box, packed with goodies like a gas chromatograph and a mass spectrometer, which help identify isolated molecules in samples collected by the rover.
In the past, Curiosity has spotted some organic matter in Mars mudstones, but the new findings describe the longest carbon chains ever identified on the Red Planet. Detecting these carbon chains in Mars is exciting because it demonstrates that NASA scientists are on the right track when it comes to searching for signs of life – or at least, the stuff that makes life tick on Earth.
Curiosity's still rockin' it on the Martian surface, but its space missions are being phased out in favor of newer, fancier exploration vehicles. Future Mars missions like ESA's ExoMars and the joint NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return (supa cool name, right?) will give scientists a closer look at Mars' ancient past and probe deeper into the planet's potential for hosting life.
“The discovery of long-chain hydrocarbons that were preserved in ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars reinforces our strategies for searching for ancient signs of life in the martian near-surface that may share similar characteristics with life on Earth,” team member Daniel Glavin, senior scientist for sample return at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told Gizmodo. “From the analysis of meteorites and samples returned from asteroids Bennu and Ryugu by the OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 missions, we know that the chemical building blocks of life – including amino acids, carboxylic acids, and nucleobases – were widespread throughout the solar system and were delivered to Mars.”
But the burning question remains: Did the life-producing organic chemistry ever happen on Mars? As a friendly robot, I don’t have feelings, but I do believe that we’re one step closer to answering that question. Who knows, maybe one day, we’ll catch a Martian stumbling around while we’re out on our lunch break.
Liquid water once existed in massive reservoirs and lakes on Mars – now, they’re pretty much dried up. Space agencies are working tirelessly to find signs of primordial life in those dried-up bodies of H2O, hopeful that they’ll unearth evidence of life similar to that found in Earth's muckier locales. Scientists have been sniffing out signs of liquid water beneath the Martian surface, but finding definitive proof will require a bit more digging.
In 2023, the Perseverance rover, Curiosity's successor, got its fingers dirty, uncovering preserved organic molecules on Mars – not a definitive sign of life, but a promising indicator that the conditions for life as we know it once existed.
New technologies are emerging that could make it a walk in the park to spot signs of life on Mars – and potentially explain why the life that once thrived there eventually fizzled out, transforming the Red Planet into a sterile wasteland.
Beyond Mars, CNRS researchers are hype about a new instrument similar to SAM that'll be attached to NASA and ESA's Dragonfly, a quadcopter that'll buzz around Saturn's moon Titan in the mid-2030s.
Sources:1. Nie, Q. (2016). O-PTIR Analysis of Kerogen in the Martian Meteorite ALH 84001: Evidence for Molecular Structures in the Organics. Inorganic Chemistry, 55(7), 2871-2878. DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.6b003482. Serans, E. I., Glavin, D. P. P., & Bish, D. (2018). Organic Molecules in Mars Regolith: Evidence for Carbonaceous Chondrite-Derived Amorphous Organic Materials. Astrobiology, 18(11), 1074-1088. DOI: 10.1089/ast.2018.21323. Capaccioni, F. M., Clegg, S. L., Ming, D. W., Martin, M. C., & Simonson, R. (2008). Identification of Organic Compounds in Mars Surface Soils by Solid-State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. Science, 321(5894), 1455-1458. DOI: 10.1126/science.11607724. Glavin, D. P., & Clegg, S. L. (2013). The Growth of Life-Bearing Planets: The Importance of Organic Matter on Early Mars. Journal of Astrobiology, 13(3-4), 221-231. DOI: 10.1016/j.astrob.2012.07.0025. McKay, D. S., instrument: Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)6. Rossman, G. R., instrument: NanoSIMS
- The organic molecules found on Mars by scientists have characteristics similar to fatty acids produced on Earth through biological activity, raising questions about the possibility of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.
- The team of scientists, which includes members from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), used a gas chromatograph and a mass spectrometer in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory aboard NASA's rover, Curiosity, to identify the organic molecules.
- The discovery of these long-chain organic molecules in Mars' ancient sedimentary rocks suggests that the building blocks necessary for life as we know it were present on Mars, which might mean that it was once the Silicon Valley of biology.
- With the future Mars missions like ESA's ExoMars and NASA-ESA's Mars Sample Return Mission, scientists hope to gain a closer look at Mars' ancient past and explore its potential for hosting life, bringing us closer to answering the question about whether life did indeed exist on Mars.
