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Strongest Evidence Yet for Ancient Life on Mars [1]

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Date: 2025-09-10

For those wishing to take a bit of a break from the avalanche of other news inundating us over the past couple of days, a new report just published in Nature just might fill the bill by highlighting the latest discoveries from our plucky little Mars Rover, Perseverance, that has now made the strongest case yet for microbial life having once existed on the Red Planet when it had more Earth-like conditions, including the presence of liquid water.

And while the Nature article is probably a bit too technical for most non-hardcore science types, physics.org has a more accessible write-up:

A new study suggests a habitable past and signs of ancient microbial processes on Mars. Led by NASA and featuring key analysis from Imperial College London, the work has uncovered a range of minerals and organic matter in Martian rocks that point to an ancient history of habitable conditions and potential biological processes on the Red Planet. ... An unexpected lake By mapping the types and distributions of different sedimentary rocks at Bright Angel, ESE researchers (including Professor Gupta and Dr. Robert Barnes, a Research Associate in ESE) were able to reconstruct the environment in which these mudstones were deposited. Their analysis revealed a range of sedimentary structures and textures indicative of lake margin and lake bed environments, including a composition rich in minerals like silica and clays—the opposite to a river scenario, where fast-moving water would carry these tiny particles away. This pointed to a surprising conclusion: they had found lake deposits in the bottom of a river valley. … With the lake habitat scenario pinned down, the Perseverance science team turned their attention to the mudstones themselves. It was inside these rocks that they discovered a group of tiny nodules and reaction fronts, with chemical analysis revealing that these millimeter-scale structures are highly enriched in iron-phosphate and iron-sulfide minerals (likely vivianite and greigite). These appear to have formed through redox reactions involving organic carbon, a process that could have been driven by either abiotic or—interestingly—biological chemistry. Importantly, this sets the stage for everything that happened next: the formation of this specific type of oxidized, iron- and phosphorus-rich sediment was the essential prerequisite for creating the ingredients for subsequent reactions. Since these ingredients mirror by-products of microbial metabolism seen on Earth, it can be considered a compelling potential biosignature, raising the possibility that there was once microbial life on Mars.

Likewise, NPR puts this all into a more comprehensive perspective:

A long time ago, life left microscopic signatures on Mars — or did it? That's the question NASA scientists have worked for years to answer. On Wednesday, NASA researchers said the answer might be in a rock sample that "contains potential biosignatures." The finding, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, puts the agency one step closer to answering one of humanity's most profound questions about life in the universe, said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate. "This finding by our incredible Perseverance rover is the closest we've actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars. And if you can't tell, we're really excited about that," Fox said during a news conference at NASA's headquarters in Washington. … Researchers using the rover's equipment to analyze the rock's spots and dots found minerals containing iron, phosphorus and sulfur, a Perseverance scientist and lead author of the study, Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University in New York, said at Wednesday's news conference. What's exciting is that a combination of mud and organic matter has reacted to produce these minerals and these textures, Hurowitz said. "When we see features like this in sediment on Earth," Hurowitz explained, "these minerals are often the byproduct of microbial metabolisms that are consuming organic matter and making these minerals as a result of those reactions." But, he added, there are also "nonbiological ways to make these features that we cannot completely rule out" as the cause with the current data, such as being heated to extremely high temperatures.

OTOH, since Mars is currently a frozen desert of a planet, and presumably has been that way for the last several billion years since it lost most of its primordial atmosphere, it's difficult to see where those “extremely high temperatures” could have come from to produce these minerals without a biological intervention.

The next big step, Hurowitz and others at the NASA event said, would be to analyze these rocks further — and in person. It would be the first time a pristine piece of another planet would be brought to Earth. Bringing the core sample back, NASA researchers wrote in the Nature paper, would let them analyze it with specialized, highly sensitive instruments that would "determine the origin of the minerals, organics and textures it contains." Perseverance has collected 30 samples on Mars so far, according to NASA, with six empty tubes left unfilled. But the agency is still working on a plan to bring them back. NASA previously laid out plans to land a spacecraft carrying Martian specimens at a U.S. Air Force testing range in Utah. But such a mission would cost billions and take years to complete — and in May, President Trump proposed cutting funding for the Mars Sample Return program, calling it "financially unsustainable." Earlier this year, the agency said it was weighing two different options for how to land and load the samples from Mars' surface.

Unfortunately, since this is the Trump regime we’re dealing with, basic science doesn’t seem to be much of a priority — so don’t get your hopes up about seeing these samples returned to Earth for a more definitive analysis.

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