Cape Canaveral: Meteorite aged 4 billion years from Mars which caused sparks on this earth a few decades ago did not contain evidence of ancient and primitive Mars life, scientists reported Thursday.
In 1996, the NASA LED team announced that organic compounds in stones appeared to have been abandoned by living things.
Other scientists who were skeptical and researchers invaded the premise for decades, the latest by the team led by the Carnegie institution for Andrew Steele Science.
Small samples of meteorites showing carbon-rich compounds are actually the result of water – most likely salty, or briny, flowing on stone for a prolonged period, Steele said.
The findings appear in the journal Science.
During the wet and early Mars, at least two impacts occurred near the rock, heating the surface around the planet, before the third impact bounced it from the red planet and two years ago.
The 4-pound rock (2 kilograms) was found in Antarctica in 1984.
The groundwater moved through the cracks in Batu, while still on Mars, forming a small carbon clump present, according to the researchers.
The same can happen on earth and can help explain the existence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars, they said.
But two scientists who participated in the original study took problems with this latest findings, called them “disappointing.” In a shared email, they said they supported their 1996 observations.
“While the data presented gradually adds to our knowledge of (meteorites), the interpretation is almost not a novel, also not supported by research,” Kathie Thomas-Keprta and Simon Clemett, astromater researchers at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“Not supported speculation does not do anything to complete the puzzle that surrounds the origin of organic matter” in meteorites, they add.
According to Steele, the advancement of technology makes the new findings of his team possible.
He praised the measurement by the original researchers and noted that the hypothesis of their life’s claim “was a reasonable interpretation” at that time.
He said he and his team – which included NASA, German and English scientists – be careful to present their results “for what they were, which was a very exciting discovery of Mars and not a study to refute the” original premise.
These findings “are very large for our understanding of how life starts on the planet and helps improve the techniques we need to find life elsewhere in Mars, or Enceladus and Europa,” Steele said in an email, referring to the month of Saturnas and Jupiter with the ocean under the surface.
The only way to prove whether Mars has experienced or still has a microbial life, according to Steele, is bringing samples to earth for analysis.
Mars Rover Perseverace NASA has collected six samples to return to Earth in a decade or more; Three dozen desired samples.
Millions of years after floating through space, meteorites landed on the Esfield in Antarctica thousands of years ago.
The small gray-green fragment got his name – Allan Hills 84001 – from the hills where it was found.
Only this week, a piece of meteorite was used in his first experiment on the international space station.
Mini scan electron microscope checking samples; Thomas-KePTA serves as operating it from Houston.
The researchers hope to use a microscope to analyze geological samples in space – on the month of one day, for example – and debris can damage the station equipment or harm astronauts.
Study Nixes Mars Life in Meteorites Found in Antarctica
