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Title: NASA's Perseverance rover finds potential signs of ancient life on
Mars

Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:34:57 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasas-...

NASA just announced that its Perseverance rover recently found some promising
signs of ancient life on Mars. The rover obtained a sample of rock formed
billions of years ago from sediment and there are biomarkers indicating the
potential presence of microbes once upon a time.

Basically, the rocks contain minerals that typically form as a result of a
chemical reaction between mud and organic matter. That doesn't necessarily
mean that Mars once had life, as the minerals can form due to nonbiological
processors. However, it's certainly one of the best pieces of evidence we
have to point toward our neighbor planet once housing life of some kind.

"On Earth, reactions like these, which combine organic matter and chemical
compounds in mud to form new minerals like vivianite and greigite, are often
driven by the activity of microbes," said Stony Brook University planetary
scientist Joel Hurowitz, who led the study published in the journal Nature.
"The microbes are consuming the organic matter in these settings and
producing these new minerals as a byproduct of their metabolism."

Hurowitz does caution that this is just a potential biosignature and not
actual proof of ancient life. Many scientists believe, however, that Mars
wasn't always quite as inhospitable as it is today.

The planet likely held plenty of water in its distant past. Researchers
suggest that the area in which Persevere found these samples was once a river
valley that led to a lake, though this was more than 3.5 billion years ago.

The samples were collected last year, but researchers needed time for
analysis. Perseverance has been roaming around the Martian surface since
2021. The six-wheeled rover has been collecting rock samples and regolith,
using its onboard instruments for this analysis. This is also just the
beginning of the research required here.

"Ultimately, follow-on research will provide us with a suite of testable
hypotheses for how to determine whether biology is responsible for the
generation of these features," Hurowitz added.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasas-...
potential-signs-of-ancient-life-on-mars-173457976.html?src=rss

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