In the present, astronomers are pretty convinced that no little green men are dwelling across the surface of Mars. The presence of microscopic organisms is debatable, but rovers didn’t find any trace of such a thing on the Red Planet. However, there’s still a chance that at a certain point in our neighboring planet’s past, some forms of alien life indeed existed.
A recent discovery of one of NASA’s rovers for exploring Mars, one that CNN tells the world about, seems to be in favor of the last hypothesis. The publication reveals that the Curiosity rover collected sediment samples that were analyzed. What scientists discovered made them excited about the possibilities for life existing on Mars in the past.
Carbon exists on Mars
The discovery is represented by the presence of carbon on Mars, the element that can’t possibly not be present in all life forms from Earth. Adding that life might exist in similar forms on our neighboring planet, there you have the reason why astronomers are so excited about their new discovery. The presence of carbon could mean that life has been present on Mars in the past.
Christopher H. House, the lead author of the study, declared as quoted by CNN:
The samples extremely depleted in carbon 13 are a little like samples from Australia taken from sediment that was 2.7 billion years old,
Those samples were caused by biological activity when methane was consumed by ancient microbial mats, but we can’t necessarily say that on Mars because it’s a planet that may have formed out of different materials and processes than Earth.
Of course, more studies are needed to confirm that it’s really about alien life existing once on Mars as an explanation for the presence of carbon.
The new study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
