{"id":413511,"date":"2025-09-10T16:01:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T16:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/413511\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T16:01:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T16:01:21","slug":"nasa-rovers-reveals-clearest-sign-of-life-ever-found-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/413511\/","title":{"rendered":"Nasa rovers reveals \u2018clearest sign of life ever found on Mars\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Nasa rover has uncovered the most compelling evidence yet that Mars may once have supported life.<\/p>\n

Perseverance\u2019s discovery involves tiny specks of minerals arranged in distinctive patterns, which on Earth are associated with living microbes.<\/p>\n

The minerals have been preserved in rocks that were formed billions of years ago from the sediment of a river, which once fed a now-vanished lake. For scientists, the samples provide a snapshot of an ancient, watery world \u2014 Mars as it was before it was stripped of its atmosphere and became the largely barren planet we now see.<\/p>\n

Sean Duffy, the acting Nasa administrator, said: \u201cA year ago, we thought we found what we believe to be signs of microbial life on the Mars surface\u2026 we put it out to our scientific friends to pressure test it, to analyse it -\u2013 did we get this right? Do we think this is a sign of ancient life on Mars? <\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a year of review, they\u2019ve come back and they said: \u2018Listen, we can\u2019t find another explanation. So, this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we\u2019ve ever found on Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Sanjeev Gupta of Imperial College London, co-author of the study, said: \u201cIt\u2019s not a slam dunk by any means. But this is the most exciting evidence so far. For the first time, we have features that can be explained by biological processes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rocks contain tiny dark specks, each less than a millimetre across, which have been nicknamed \u201cpoppy seeds\u201d, as well as larger dark-rimmed rosettes with lighter centres, known by the researchers as \u201cleopard spots\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Annotated<\/p>\n

The samples were found years ago, seen here before extraction<\/p>\n

NASA\/JPL-CALTECH\/MSSS<\/p>\n

Analysis by instruments on board Perseverance, a car-sized rover, has shown that the poppy seeds and the rims of the leopard spots are rich in iron and phosphorus, while the centres of the leopard spots are rich in iron and sulphur.<\/p>\n

Scientists believe these patterns formed when carbon-rich organic compounds in the rock triggered redox reactions, in which electrons were transferred between minerals, changing their chemical state.<\/p>\n

On Earth, similar reactions are driven by the metabolism of living microbes in freshwater and marine environments, raising the possibility that the Martian features are a record of biological activity. \u201cMinerals like these \u2026 provide some of the earliest chemical evidence for life on Earth,\u201d the research team explain in a paper published in the journal Nature.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Mars may harbour life in vast underground reservoir<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

It is also possible that on Mars these features formed through purely chemical processes over millions of years. However, the reactions appear to have occurred at cool temperatures, which potentially tilt the balance towards a biological origin. <\/p>\n

The age of the samples collected by Perseverance is not known exactly, but one estimate puts them at 3.5 to 3.7 billion years old \u2014 dates that would roughly align with the earliest evidence of microbial life on Earth.<\/p>\n

\"High-resolution<\/p>\n

The rover took its sample after landing on the planet\u2019s Jezero Crater, seen here<\/p>\n

NASA\/JPL-CALTECH\/MSSS<\/p>\n

Professor John Parnell of the University of Aberdeen, who was not part of the most recent study, agreed that the findings were significant. \u201cOn Earth, you find these sorts of [features] in places where microbes have been active,\u201d he said, adding that they are not known to occur through other means. <\/p>\n

In fact, scientists from Aberdeen were in touch with Nasa when the Perseverance mission was being planned. Among the materials they sent were photographs of very similar redox patterns left behind by microbes, which can be seen today on rocks near the town of Millport on the island of Great Cumbrae, off the coast of mainland Scotland.<\/p>\n

Nicky Fox, head of science at Nasa, said: \u201cThis finding, by our incredible Perseverance rover, is the closest we\u2019ve actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars\u2026 It\u2019s kind of the equivalent of seeing leftovers from a meal, and maybe that meal has been excreted by a microbe \u2014 and that\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing in this sample.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthew Cook, head of space exploration at the UK space agency, which has supported Gupta\u2019s team at Imperial, said: \u201cWhile we must remain scientifically cautious about definitive claims of ancient life, these findings represent the most promising evidence yet discovered.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Martian sample was gathered by Perseverance after it landed on the planet\u2019s Jezero Crater region in 2021. It is stored, along with a number of rock cores, and sealed inside the rover, awaiting a potential trip back to Earth.<\/p>\n

\"Perseverance<\/p>\n

Tracks left by the rover on the surface of the red planet<\/p>\n

NASA\/JPL-CALTECH\/MSSS<\/p>\n

If the rocks ever make it back, scientists could use laboratory instruments far more powerful than those on the rover to examine the minerals in detail. Isotopic analyses, for example, could potentially reveal whether the mineral patterns were shaped by life or by chemistry alone.<\/p>\n

Even if the specks ultimately prove non-biological, they reveal a planet of previously unappreciated complexity \u2014 where water, minerals, and organic compounds interacted in ways that could, in principle, support living organisms. <\/p>\n

\u201cBefore you can find life, you need to find a habitat for it to inhabit,\u201d Parnell said. \u201cWhat we have here, at the very least, is the potential for a habitat. That\u2019s a conservative way of putting it. And every possible habitat on the Earth has been colonised.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Nasa rover has uncovered the most compelling evidence yet that Mars may once have supported life. Perseverance\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-413511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115180842985352219","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}