NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Promising Evidence of Life on Mars
NOT ALONE?
“The chances of being able to find signs of ancient life with future missions, if life ever was present, just went up,” said one scientist.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Handout via REUTERS / Reuters
On Thursday, NASA announced that its Curiosity rover had discovered organic material—carbon containing molecules that are essential building blocks for life—within Gale Crater, a 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock that scientists believed might have held a lake. The Curiosity rover also confirmed signs of methane—the gas originated by animal and plant life on Earth. Scientists believe that these dual discoveries potentially prove that life might have either originated on Mars or existed at one time. Astrobiologists say the next step is figuring out where the methane is seeping from; while it’s most likely a result of a geological process, a biological source can't be ruled out.
