![\"U.S.-NASA-PRESEVERANCE](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761184458_273_960x0.jpg\")
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NASA’s Perseverance robot, depicted here landing on the Martian dunes, used its cutting-edge cameras to image what could be the first evidence of life ever detected on Mars, opening the possibility that the Milky Way “could be teeming with life.” (NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/Handout via Xinhua) (Xinhua\/NASA\/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Xinhua News Agency\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s discovery of potential evidence of ancient life on Mars increases the chances that planets across the galaxy could host rich biospheres, says one of the world\u2019s leading scholars on the habitable star systems now being mapped around the Milky Way.<\/p>\n
After NASA\u2019s Perseverance Mars robot, equipped with an array of cutting-edge cameras and spectrometers, uncovered fossil-like traces on a sample of mudstone, the agency\u2019s acting administrator trumpeted the find.<\/p>\n
While a team of scientists unraveled the tantalizing hint of microbial activity back when the Red Planet\u2019s Jezero Crater<\/a> hosted an animated web of waterways, for the British journal Nature, interim NASA head Sean Duffy hailed the advance in uncovering possible imprints of Mars\u2019 mysterious past. <\/p>\n \u201cThis finding by Perseverance,\u201d Duffy said, \u201cis the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars. The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n If the finding of microorganisms on Mars\u2014whether DNA-based or not\u2014is confirmed, that would mark an incredible leap for the sphere of science, one that would ricochet across civilization and into the future, says Pete Worden<\/a>, an eminent American astrophysicist who has headed a series of leading-edge searches for hyper-tech alien societies across the galaxy.<\/p>\n Three of the seven Earth-like planets in the TRAPPIST-1 solar system orbit in the habitable zone of a Red Dwarf star, and are targets in the ever-expanding search for extraterrestrial civilizations. (Photo digital Illustration by NASA\/NASA via Getty Images)<\/p>\n NASA via Getty Images<\/p>\n If proven, Dr. Worden told me in an interview, \u201cThe existence of life on Mars and its character becomes one of the most important science discoveries of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n Worden is one of the key players worldwide in conducting searches for signs of life, or biosignatures, across the thousands of exoplanets discovered so far, and in the quest to detect radio or laser communications sent out by techno-civilizations across this section of the cosmos.<\/p>\n As chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and executive director of its Breakthrough Initiatives, Worden has co-led a torrent of pathbreaking studies aimed at seeking sophisticated messages transmitted from solar systems at the center of the galaxy<\/a>, where stars are clustered closer together, and therefore the possibility of interstellar treks, or even multi-stellar civilizations, is greater.<\/p>\n Pete Worden has co-led searches for technological civilizations across the clustered stars at the center of the Milky Way (Photo by: QAI Publishing\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n Founded by the billionaire space philanthropist Yuri Milner, together with cosmologist Stephen Hawking<\/a> and Pete Worden, the $100-million Breakthrough Listen project is deploying next-generation technologies to scan the skies for \u201cevidence of technological civilizations in the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n These seekers of fellow spacefaring societies across the heavens say they aim to tap a rush of advances in space-based and terrestrial telescopes, and in computing power and next-generation imaging systems, \u201cto survey targets including one million nearby stars, the entire galactic plane and 100 nearby galaxies at a wide range of radio and optical frequency bands.\u201d <\/p>\n Breakthrough Listen astronomers aim to scan one million stars and 100 nearby galaxies for messages beamed out by advanced alien cultures. Shown here is the mesmerizing spiral Andromeda Galaxy. Photo by: Alan Dyer \/VW PICS\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n A physicist-turned-angel-investor in nascent internet titans, Milner says in a manifesto<\/a> outlining the central goals of the Breakthrough Foundation that all of humanity should join a pacific global quest to explore and understand the universe, all while seeking out stargazers and spacecraft designers across the cosmos who might be rushing to create a galactic civilization. <\/p>\n Humanity\u2019s first push to foster an inter-planetary future, Milner predicts, will begin with colonizing the Red Planet, but adds: \u201cMars must be a stepping stone to more distant destinations.\u201d <\/p>\n Dr. Worden has co-authored a cascade of studies on terraforming Mars<\/a>, in part by bioengineering an archipelago of experimental Martian Edens<\/a>, shielded inside crystalline geodesic domes, that could host human colonies and expanding botanical and zoological gardens genetically adapted to thrive on Mars. <\/p>\n Leading-edge scientists aim to terraform Mars by creating vast Edens, protected inside geodesic domes, that could host the first human outposts, along with botanical gardens genetically adapted to thrive on Mars. (Photo by Mitterbauer\/ullstein bild via Getty Images)<\/p>\n ullstein bild via Getty Images<\/p>\n After NASA unveiled its fascinating findings of possible life that emerged on Mars when its dunes spread out alongside rivers that channeled into lakes formed inside massive impact craters, I asked Dr. Worden whether, if the working hypothesis of primitive life on Mars is confirmed, that would represent one of the most world-changing revelations in the history of human civilization, on a level with Copernicus toppling the Greek astronomer Ptolemy\u2019s model of the Earth as the center of the cosmos.<\/p>\n If the Earth loses its position as the sole Eden in the endless starry skies, could that also mean there might be life across billions of planets in the Milky Way or trillions of planets across the universe?<\/p>\n \u201cThere are two possibilities for life,\u201d Dr. Worden says in a fascinating sketch he sent to me on the alternative potential origins of life on Mars, and on Earth. <\/p>\n \u201cThe first is that it arises in chemical processes on or near planetary surfaces. If we find life on Mars or elsewhere in the solar system that\u2019s truly different (chemically even structurally) that would mean life may be everywhere.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cConversely,\u201d he adds, \u201clife (on Earth or Mars), could have arisen elsewhere and been transported via meteorites.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThis is called panspermia.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cA variant is \u2018Directed Panspermia\u2019 where the life was deliberately planted.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIf life is similar, especially if Mars and Earth life show a common ancestor that may mean life originated on the Earth (or Mars) and traveled between planets.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cA variant is that the galaxy is infected with life and life on Earth or Mars came from an interstellar source, (including a deliberate intelligent one),\u201d Worden says. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is most interesting as its would indicate at least our galaxy could be teeming with life.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThere are several reasons to prefer this answer.\u201d <\/p>\n No matter which theory on the fountainhead of life in this solar system ultimately turns out to be the correct one, he adds, solid scientific proof that life had once taken hold on Mars, and might still survive across scattered refugia, would be one of the greatest breakthroughs ever made by humanity in modeling the universe, and would provide powerful boosters to the global quest to foster a spacefaring civilization.<\/p>\n Already an academic star in the sphere of astrophysics and in the search for advanced alien civilizations, Pete Worden also gained screen fame with his part in the HBO\u2019s sensational new documentary Wild Wild Space<\/a>.<\/p>\n The show, now being streamed by HBO Max<\/a>, skips across a montage of independent space players like the future co-founders of Planet Labs, who tested their first prototypes of miniaturized imaging satellites while enlisted in Worden\u2019s brigades of young freethinking space scientists and inventors when he headed the NASA Ames Research Center.<\/p>\n The leaders of Planet Labs, the leading-edge designer of imagery satellites, launched their first prototype while still researchers at the freewheeling NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley (Photo By Michael Macor\/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images<\/p>\n Worden transformed the NASA outpost, located in the wild west tech capital of Silicon Valley, into a futuristic skunkworks of radical spaceflight experiments. <\/p>\n Just as he reshaped NASA Ames into the central node in a globe-spanning network connecting space visionaries and NewSpace rocket designers, at the Breakthrough Foundation he has crafted a worldwide web of exchanges with the top scientists seeking out interstellar cultures and astronomers<\/a> that might be beaming laser-borne messages across the Milky Way.<\/p>\n Across a decade-long series of Breakthrough Discuss assemblies, which have skipped from the campus of Stanford University in California to the University of Oxford in the UK, Worden has invited leading lights to brainstorm on new ideas and innovations to push forward this celestial quest.<\/p>\n The expanding Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence has gained a global spotlight through blockbuster films like ‘CONTACT’ by Robert Zebecks (Photo by Francois Duhamel\/Sygma via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Sygma via Getty Images<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Dr. Worden elaborated on his conception, \u201cLife in the Universe,\u201d in a follow-up missive via electronic mail:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is now widely accepted that life emerged on Earth over four billion years ago,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n \u201cRemarkably, life appears to have begun within a few hundred million years after the planet cooled sufficiently to allow the formation of liquid water \u2014 a necessary condition for all known Earth-based life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe know a great deal about the Last Universal Common Ancestor<\/strong> (LUCA) \u2014 the hypothetical root organism from which all current life on Earth descends.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cLUCA already possessed a sophisticated molecular toolkit, including the DNA-to-RNA-to-protein translation machinery.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cBut beyond LUCA, our knowledge fades into speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMost biologists hypothesize that LUCA was preceded by an RNA World<\/strong>, in which early life was based solely on RNA \u2014 a molecule that can store genetic information and catalyze chemical reactions.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cDNA, the more stable information-storage molecule, likely evolved later,\u201d Worden says. <\/p>\n