NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered many organic carbon samples that exist on Mars, supporting the hypothesis that life once existed on the red planet in the past.
Reporting in the journal Science, researchers announced that the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) tool on the Curiosity rover detected organic substances at the site. A second paper followed which also reported some interesting findings about methane.
Sanjeev Gupta from Imperial College London in the UK, one of the study’s co-authors, told IFLScience: “It’s a really big stepping stone, it gives us great confidence that future missions Full hybrids have the potential to discover life.”
The Curiosity rover was launched in 2011 and is contributing greatly to research on the red planet.
Using the SAM instrument, a team led by Jennifer Eigenbrode from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center examined Martian soil samples about three years ago from mudstone in Gale Crater. It was collected by the Curiosity drill from 5 cm below the surface, preserved in sulfur and dated to between 3.2 and 3.8 billion years, when water was once present.
Previous attempts to find organics on Mars, including the Viking missions in 1976 and the Phoenix lander in 2008, have failed to lead us to any conclusion. This discovery by the Curiosity robot marks the first time we know clearly about organic compounds on the surface of Mars.
We need to understand that this is not a discovery of life, but evidence that helps strengthen the hypothesis that life, even civilizations, once existed on Mars.
Mars most likely had civilizations in the past (Photo: thehoopsnews.com)
This is entirely possible because a synthesis of past research shows that Mars has all the conditions necessary to sustain life like Earth, including water, air, and organic matter. …
In addition, according to Dr. John Brandenburg from the University of California, there is enough evidence to show that at least two large nuclear explosions have occurred on the surface of the red planet in the past. This hypothesis is based on traces of uranium and thorium (two radioactive substances) found on the surface of Mars.
His research shows that the Martian atmosphere contains unusually large amounts of materials also found on Earth after nuclear bomb testing.
There is convincing evidence that nuclear explosions have occurred on Mars.
“The high concentration of Xenon-129 in the atmosphere, traces of Krypton-80 and the excess of Uranium and Thorium on the surface of Mars, when compared to its meteorites, were first discovered by Russia and now confirmed by the gamma-ray spectrometer on the Mars Odyssey probe, showing that the surface of Mars was certainly once the site of large radioactive explosions, creating a large amount of radioactive isotopes and covering on its surface a thin layer of radioactive material is enriched in certain elements compared to the rock layers below. This pattern can be explained based on two unusual nuclear explosions on Mars in the past,” said Dr. John Brandenburg.
This shows a very high probability that Mars once had civilizations that existed and were brutally destroyed by themselves or other forces in the universe. And if this is true, then one day, the possibility that the same thing will happen to our blue planet is entirely possible.
The European space agency’s Exomars probe will reach Mars in 2020.
To get a bigger picture, ESA will send the ExoMars robot to Mars in 2020. It can drill up to 2 meters below the surface, 40 times more than Curiosity, to depths where material is more sheltered from radiation. At depths like these, we can find many organic compounds.
Besides, NASA is also planning to bring rocks from Mars to Earth within the next 2 years. Let’s wait until that time to follow more impressive discoveries.
