If life were to exist on an extraterrestrial planet, scientists expect it to have certain fundamental properties: It would have the presence of carbon, an element essential for life. Generation of organic moleculesThe planet would have enough water for life to thrive, and the environment would be kept within a tolerable temperature range (-15º C to 115º C). Even if these conditions do not exist on any currently known planets, scientists hope that life could have existed on certain planets in the past.
One of the planets people have pinned their hopes on is the red planet next to Earth, Mars. However, Recent Research According to the journal Communications Earth and Environment, Mars doesn’t quite meet the criteria needed to have supported life in the past — at least, nothing on Earth has.
Scientists studying materials found in Gale Crater on Mars by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity since 2011 have compared the soils to similar materials on Earth. The soils and rocks in Gale Crater provide a record of Martian climate 3 to 4 billion years ago, roughly the same time that life emerged on Earth. They also contain unique structures. One scientist said: Explained They’ve been called “jelly-like X-ray amorphous materials” and “soups of different elements and chemicals sliding against one another,” and the research could reveal what external conditions were present when they formed.
But the geological record does not suggest the presence of past life, according to researchers who used X-ray diffraction analysis and transmission electron microscopy to examine samples from Gale Crater, as well as samples from the plateaus of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, the Klamath Mountains in Northern California, and western Nevada.
Newfoundland’s subarctic climate produced materials chemically similar to those in Gale Crater, but not in warmer climates like California or Nevada, meaning this unique structure could only have formed when temperatures on Mars were much colder than life on Earth could tolerate.
