The Beeb has an interesting piece on more chemical evidence of life coming from a Martian meteorite:
The material resembles that found in fractures, or “veins”, apparently etched by microbes in volcanic glass from the Earth’s ocean floor.
Details will be presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, next month.
All the processes of life on Earth are based on the element carbon.
Proving carbon in Martian meteorites is indigenous – and not contamination from Earth – is crucial to the question of whether life once arose on the Red Planet.
Initial measurements support the idea that the “carbonaceous material” is not contamination, the scientists say.
Evidence seems to indicate that Mars was once a wetter, warmer place than the cold and arid desert of today. The chances that Mars may have developed simple microbial life some time in its history seems quite likely. The possibility that Martian life and Earth life may be related through the cross-pollination of organic molecules carried by meteorites is also an interesting possibility. The discovery of life on Mars would have a dramatic effect on our view of the universe, which is why the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life in our own cosmic backyard offers so much intrigue. If life could form on Mars, the chances of life developing on another planet in another solar system becomes all that stronger.
