Curiosity finds largest-ever organic molecules on Mars
In May 2013, Curiosity started drilling into an area known as 'Yellowknife Bay' in the Gale Crater. Scientists were interested in examining the region not for what it is today, but for what it may have been millions of years ago. Yellowknife Bay wasn't a randomly chosen name—the arid and desolate landscape's features still hint at a large, long-evaporated lakebed.
Curiosity's soil survey, nicknamed 'Cumberland,' has been analyzed multiple times inside its Sample Analysis on Mars (SAM) onboard mini-lab and has yielded a trove of new information about the planet's past. In particular, it is rich in clay minerals that often form in water, and contains sufficient amounts of sulfur to help preserve organic molecules. Cumberland also features nitrates crucial to healthy animal and plant life, as well as methane containing a specific type of carbon associated with biological processes.
Most striking, though, was conclusive confirmation that Yellowknife Bay once hosted an ancient lake, further supporting the theory that Mars was once home to life of some kind.
Experts have since spent years examining data gleaned from SAM mini-lab analyses. In one recent experiment, a team including Glavin and Caroline Freissinet, an astrobiologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research worked to locate evidence of amino acids inside the Cumberland sample. While they didn't find them that time, something else caught their eye: trace amounts of three carbon-chain molecules known as a decane, undecane, and dodecane. With 10, 11, and 12 carbons respectively, researchers believe these organic compounds may be residual fragments of fatty acids needed for cell membrane formation and other biological functions.
These fatty acids aren't always definitive proof of life, however. Geological events like water-mineral interactions in hydrothermal vents can also produce similar molecules. That said, the length of many of the Cumberland soil carbon-chains could suggest otherwise. Depending on the molecule, organic life fatty acids often contain chains of 11-13 carbon atoms, while non-biological fatty acids usually contain 12 or fewer carbons. This means that at least some of the large organic molecules detected by Freissinet's team may have once existed in organic life. What's more, the discovery eases worries that Martian biosignatures couldn't survive tens of millions of years of exposure to destructive oxidation and radiation.
'Our study proves that, even today, by analyzing Mars samples we could detect chemical signatures of past life, if it ever existed on Mars,' Freissinet, who also served as the latest study's lead author, said in a statement.
'There is evidence that liquid water existed in Gale Crater for millions of years and probably much longer, which means there was enough time for life-forming chemistry to happen in these crater-lake environments on Mars,' added Daniel Glavin, study co-author and sample return senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Unfortunately, Freissinet and colleagues can only discover so much using Curiosity's SAM mini-lab. Organic fatty acid chains are often much longer than just 12 carbons, but the rover's equipment isn't designed to detect those. Luckily, NASA is ready and willing to assist in the next chapter of Martian exploration.
'We are ready to take the next big step and bring Mars samples home to our labs to settle the debate about life on Mars,' Glavin said.
Glavin, Freissinet, and colleagues may be waiting a while for that next step, however. While NASA has long planned on a Mars Sample Return mission, a ballooning budget and an uncertain future may push the project as far back as 2040.
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USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
What would Mars look like in daylight? 'Enhanced' photo from Perseverance offers a look
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Vox
a day ago
- Vox
The fake news that helped put us on a path to Mars
The richest person in the world is obsessed with creating a city on Mars. Elon Musk would like to see a million people living in a self-sufficient Martian settlement by 2050, both as a plan B for Earth and because it gives us something cool to get excited about. Traveling to Mars has been a recurring theme of spacefaring fantasies for decades, from the German rocket innovator Wernher von Braun to science fiction writers Ray Bradbury and Kim Stanley Robinson. Human exploits on Mars have also been the subject of countless movies, TV shows, and comic books. There are many good reasons to explore Mars. The discovery of water deep below the surface and ice at its poles suggests that the conditions to sustain life may have existed on the Red Planet, and perhaps still do. Studying Mars could teach us about how life emerged on Earth. While rovers have made great strides in uncovering the planet's secrets, human explorers could accelerate the pace of discovery. Living on Mars would bring many challenges for humans, among them cosmic and solar radiation exposure, an asphyxiating atmosphere, lower-than-Earth gravity, extreme temperatures, toxic soil, and no ready supply of food, drinkable water, or breathable air. But our cultural and scientific fascination with Mars lives on. And if Musk's SpaceX or a competitor lands humans on Mars in the coming years, it will be the realization of an ancient dream. To think that it all started with an optical illusion that tricked some astronomers into believing that Mars was riven with canals flanked with vegetation and carved by wise, peace-loving extraterrestrials. Today, Explained co-host Sean Ramewaram spoke with David Baron, author of The Martians: The True Story of An Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America, about the belief in intelligent Martian life and the fixation on Mars that has gripped generations of scientists, science fiction writers, and tech billionaires. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. Why do we all care about Mars? As a culture, Mars has seeped into our collective psyche. There's this sense of mystery and romance. A little more than a century ago, the public believed that Mars was inhabited by intelligent beings. Before Martians were staples of science fiction, they were believed to be a scientific fact. You could open the New York Times in 1906 and read in all seriousness about the civilization on Mars, what the Martians might be like, how we might communicate with them, and what we might learn from them. In 1907, the Wall Street Journal said the biggest news of the year was proof of intelligent life on Mars. Where did the fact that there were Martians come from? It all started in 1877. In the 19th century, all we knew about Mars was what we could see through earthbound telescopes. But in 1877, when Mars came especially close to Earth, an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli decided he was going to make a detailed map of Mars. And so, night after night, he studied the planet and saw what he thought were oceans and continents. But he also saw this network of thin, exceptionally straight lines that he imagined were waterways. He called them 'canali,' which in Italian means channels, but when it was translated into English, it was mistranslated as canals. And so, as soon as 1877, people were joking about these canals on Mars and wondering what they were, but people didn't think they were artificially constructed. In 1894, Percival Lowell, an American astronomer, came along and said, yes, these were irrigation canals that Martians were using to survive on a planet that was running out of water. All of Mars's moisture was locked up in the polar ice caps at the north and south poles, and for the Martians to survive, they had created this global network of irrigation canals. That's what these lines supposedly were. They would come and go with the seasons. They tended to appear in the spring and summer, and they would fade in the fall and winter. Lowell theorized that vegetation along the irrigation canals would appear in the spring and summer, and fade in the fall and winter when the leaves presumably died off. This was also a time when people were looking for hope in outer space. In the late 19th century, at least in the West, there were a lot of reasons for despair. There was anarchism in Europe. There were heads of state being assassinated. President William McKinley was assassinated in the United States early in the 20th century. There was a feeling that society was running down. There were wars, including the Spanish-American War in the late 19th century. The idea was that the Martians were these advanced beings who were what we hopefully would become in the future. The fact that they had this global network of irrigation canals meant that they had pulled together as a planet and evolved beyond war and divisive politics. Because it looked like they were cooperating across a planet. Exactly. So there was a real desire to believe in the Martians. Was there anyone out there saying, 'Guys, just because we see some canals, it doesn't mean there are Martians'? Absolutely. In fact, the astronomical community divided into the canalists and the anti-canalists. Lowell was a self-made astronomer. He was an extraordinarily wealthy and articulate human being from a very prominent family in Massachusetts. And so he was able to write articles for the Atlantic Monthly promoting his ideas. He was out there giving lectures about the Martians. And so he was able to convince the public, even if there were a lot of astronomers he couldn't convince. When was peak obsession with Mars in this era? That was 1908 and 1909. By 1908, the idea was so widespread, you had pastors in church sermonizing about the Martians and expressing to their congregations that we should emulate the Martians and look to our neighboring planet for the kind of society that we should be. Alexander Graham Bell, who of course invented the telephone, was convinced that the Martians were real. He saw no question that Mars was inhabited by intelligent beings. Nikola Tesla, a great inventor who came up with our modern system of generating and distributing electrical power, was convinced that he picked up radio signals from Mars. And when he announced that to the world at the beginning of 1901, it set off an absolute craze. Martians invaded popular culture. They showed up on the vaudeville and Broadway stages. There was a popular show called 'A Yankee Circus on Mars.' You had a Martian that became a comic character in the newspapers. They showed up in Tin Pan Alley songs. In fact, I have an original wax cylinder recording of a song called 'A Signal From Mars' from back then. The Martians were just everywhere in popular culture. How did it fall apart? Astronomers by the 1910s had pretty well convinced themselves that this whole canal theory was bunk. But the idea had so taken hold in the brains of the public that the idea of canals on Mars persisted until the 1950s and 60s. In 1938, there was the famous 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast by Orson Welles. And there were people who actually believed, listening to the radio, that the Martians were invading. I actually found a letter to Orson Welles that was written by one of those listeners who was fooled, who was angry about it. And what she wrote was, well, haven't astronomers found canals on Mars? Don't we know that there are Martians there? The idea persisted well into the 1960s when NASA sent its first Mariner spacecraft flying by Mars to take the first close-up pictures of the surface. And there was not only no sign of a civilization, there was no sign of straight lines. It just looked like a dead world. Thinking back to what you said earlier, when people were first enchanted by this idea of Martians in the early 20th century, it was this idea that we could all work together that really captured imaginations. And it's still a nice idea. Do you think there's still a chance that we could get together as a human race to unite in an effort to get to Mars? It doesn't look that likely. I think what will inspire the United States to get to Mars more than anything is competition, because the Chinese want to get there. But there is still this dream of Mars as this techno-utopia that will be better than Earth, that will be more egalitarian, where we can start over again. I think there are two lessons from the Mars craze. On the one hand, it's a cautionary tale. We tend to project onto Mars what we hope is there, not what's really there. A hundred years ago, we believed in Martians because we wanted to believe that there was a better world next door. Today, I think a lot of the talk about Mars is that we're going to create this utopia next door. That's going to be so difficult: technically difficult, and, as you said, getting humans together to make this possible, Lord knows if that's ever going to happen.
CNN
2 days ago
- CNN
Niger opens investigation after Sotheby's auction of Martian meteorite
Africa MusicFacebookTweetLink Follow A rare Martian meteorite, billed as the largest piece of Mars on Earth, captured attention when it fetched millions from an anonymous bidder at a recent Sotheby's auction. But the move has caused Niger, the country in West Africa where the space rock was initially found, to question the legality of its export. The Nigerien government has opened a formal investigation into the circumstances leading up to the meteorite's sale last month, describing it as 'comparable to illicit international trafficking.' The space rock sold for $5.3 million, including taxes and fees, to an anonymous bidder at a Sotheby's New York auction on July 16. The meteorite — a remnant after a comet, asteroid or meteoroid survives passing through Earth's atmosphere — was discovered in Niger's vast, arid and remote Agadez region in November 2023 by a meteorite hunter, according to its Sotheby's catalog note. Known as NWA 16788, the meteorite weighs 54 pounds (24.5 kilograms), which dwarfs the typically small Martian meteorites that have been found. The investigation, led by the country's ministries of mines, security, higher education and justice, is intended to uncover more details about the meteorite's discovery and sale. Currently, the identities of both the seller and buyer remain unknown. Morocco has regulations that allow meteorite hunters to legally collect and export space rocks they find. Meteorite hunters apply for a permit from the Moroccan Geological Survey, and then they must report any discovery, including its size, a photo and the coordinates of its location, as well as share some of the sample with the government agency, according to a December article published in the journal Heritage that mentions NWA 16788. However, Niger does not currently have specific legislation regarding meteorites, according to the government statement shared on X — which Sotheby's echoed in a statement responding to the country's NWA 16788 investigation. 'The NWA 16788 meteorite was exported from Niger and transported in line with all relevant international procedures,' according to a statement that a Sotheby's spokesperson shared with CNN via email. 'As with everything we sell, all necessary documentation was in order at each stage of its journey, in accordance with best practice and the requirements of the countries involved. We are aware from public reports that Niger has raised a question about the export of the meteorite, and we are reviewing the information available to us in light of the question raised. Regarding the question of Niger law, we note that the government there has stated that Niger does not yet have specific legislation on meteorites.' The discourse about the meteorite is shedding light on the murkiness around who owns space rocks that fall to Earth — a convoluted issue, according to the Heritage article. Only about 400 Martian meteorites have ever been found on Earth, according to London's Natural History Museum. Since no human has landed on Mars, the meteorites are the closest scientists can come to studying the red planet under microscopes on Earth. Meteorites are considered cosmic time capsules, rocks enriched with the history of the solar system and the compositions of its planets. NWA 16788 was likely blasted from the Martian surface due to an impact from an asteroid or a comet millions of years ago, according to Sotheby's. Parts of the meteorite were turned into glass from the impact, and the space rock also bears a glassy crust that formed as it zipped through Earth's atmosphere. NWA 16788 is around 70% larger than other Martian meteorites of significant mass, such as Zagami, which weighs about 40 pounds (18 kilograms). Before being sold at auction (although it's unclear how the space rock arrived there), NWA 16788 was exhibited at the Italian Space Agency in Rome in 2024 and held by a private gallery in Arezzo, Italy, and two slices of the space rock are kept at the University of Florence, according to the Heritage article. The study found that while natural history museums house most known samples, i.e., smaller pieces, of Martian meteorites, investors and private collectors actually hold most of the main Mars rock masses. 'The ownership of Martian meteorites is, therefore, a dynamic and multifaceted issue,' the authors wrote in the Heritage study. 'While private ownership and trade are generally legal in many countries, there is growing recognition of their scientific, cultural, and economic significance. Striking a balance between accessibility for scientific research, public education, and private collecting remains a central challenge for policymakers and the scientific community.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
