Microbial life on Mars: based on information from NASA’s Perseverance rover, new theories are emerging, thanks in part to the exploration of Jezero Crater, where it identified the Bright Angel formation as Chevaya Falls, Sapphire Canyon, and Apollo Temple. Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University analyzed the presence of phosphates, hematite, vivianite, and preygite. Michael Tice, from Texas A&M University, studied the presence of these minerals in terrestrial patterns. Read on to learn about the new theories.
Data collected from the Perseverance
Data collected from the Perseverance rover last year has just presented what might be the best prove yet for microbial life on Mars. The best answer for leopard-spot speckles on a rock named Chevaya Falls (and others like it in the Bright Angel formation) is biological processes, according to exhaustive study led by geoscientist and planetary investigation Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University in the US.
Of course, we won’t know for sure until the sample collected by Perseverance has been brought to Earth for full study. Non-biological processes are still predicted– but the evidence compiled by Hurowitz and his colleagues is tantalizingly compelling.
Scientists were immediately rapt
Chevaya Falls was found by Perseverance just over a year ago as it trundled its way across the floor of the Jezero Crater, a big basin once filled with liquid water. Investigatos were at once rapt: here on Earth, characteristics like to those seen on the rock are usually related with fossilized microbes.
Nevertheless, the data presented by Perseverance’s suite of science instruments from Chevaya Falls and two other rocks in the Bright Angel formation, Sapphire Canyon and Apollo Temple, needed further study.
“The combination of chemical compounds we found in the Bright Angel formation could have been a rich source of energy for microbial metabolisms,” Hurowitz says. “But just because we saw all these compelling chemical signatures in the data didn’t mean we had a potential biosignature. We needed to analyze what that data could mean.”
What the samples analyed
According to Perseverance’s information, the samples it analyzed contained organic, carbon-rich material. There is a lot of organic material on Mars, and there are, in addition, a lot of non-biological processes that are able to produce organic material, impliying the presence of such is not diagnostic in and of itself.
Nevertheless, when other potential biomarkers are present, organic material turns out to be more relevant. The Bright Angel formation is rich in clay, which underlines the presence of water. That’s one box ticked. The rock also had calcium sulfate apart from seams of an iron-rich mineral named hematite.
Meanwhile, the leopard spots were particularly rich in iron phosphate and iron sulfide, probably the minerals vivianite and greigite. Phosphates are of great biological significance here on Earth, and both minerals could be the product of electrochemical reduction and oxidation, or ‘redox’, reactions implying organic carbon, either biological or non-biological (abiotic).
