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Possible evidence of life on Mars?

Denyse O'Leary
December 9, 2014
Extraterrestrial life, News
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According to a recent paper submitted by an international team of scientists, that evidence may have arrived on Earth three and a half years ago aboard a meteorite that fell in the Moroccan desert. Believed to have broken away from Mars 700,000 years ago, so-called Tissint meteorite has internal features that researchers say appear to be organic materials.

The paper appeared in the scientific journal Meteoritics and Planetary Sciences. In it, the research team – which includes scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) – indicate organic carbon is located inside fissures in the rock. All indications are the meteorite is Martian in origin.

“So far, there is no other theory that we find more compelling,” says Philippe Gillet, director of EPFL’s Earth and Planetary Sciences Laboratory. He and his colleagues from China, Japan and Germany performed a detailed analysis of organic carbon traces from a Martian meteorite, and have concluded that they have a very probable biological origin.

Physicist Rob Sheldon writes to say

It is a credible report, but nothing new. We have known about organic carbon on Mars since the infamous ALH84001 Martian meteorite, which in 1996 began the Conference that I attend every August. We have Mars pictures that show algae growing on rocks, algae growing on snow. We have spectroscopic evidence of methane (undoubtedly biological in origin) growing and waning in the atmosphere with the seasons. We have a picture of a fossil crinoid found by the Mars rover, fossil “blueberries”, almost too much information to process.

What this report reveals, is that one can now talk about life on Mars without losing one’s job. Slowly the field is moving as a result of death and attrition.

Well, if it is indeed life, it’ll probably persist and we will hear more about it.

See also: Origin of life: Could it all have come together in one very special place?

Don’t let Mars fool you. Those exoplanets teem with life!

and

The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (origin of life)

Hat tip: Timothy Kershner

Comments
So who ever got fired for suggesting that there was or is life on Mars? Isn't that the materialist dream come true? Isn't that one of the primary reasons NASA is funded with taxpayer's money to begin with? Edward
“So far, there is no other theory that we find more compelling,”
try this one: http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Asteroids2.html#wp4922287
The Tagish Lake Meteorite Evolutionists understand how hard it is for most people to believe life evolved on Earth, and the media know how excited the public is with the idea of life evolving on other planets. This may explain why evolutionists and the media are increasingly claiming that life came from outer space. The universe is aswarm with the stuff of biology—and it could be seeding life everywhere ... and meteors that landed on Earth have been found to contain amino acids, nucleobases—which help to form DNA and RNA—and even sugars. (Time Magazine, “Aliens Among Us,” 22 October 2012, pp. 44, 46.) Such statements overlook obvious facts and a simple explanation. Let’s look at just one piece of scientific evidence. One of the most studied meteorite falls in modern times occurred at 4:43 PM on 18 January 2000 at Tagish (TA-jis) Lake in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. A meteoroid, estimated to be 112,000 pounds and 13 feet in diameter, struck Earth’s upper atmosphere. About 97% of the rock burned up in the atmosphere; of the rest (3%), some fell onto the frozen lake, greatly reducing the chance of contamination. More than 500 black fragments (totaling 22 pounds) were soon recovered on the ice and later analyzed by an international team of twenty scientists. Organic Matter. Almost 3% (by weight) of these pristine meteorites were complex organic molecules, obviously produced by living organisms: amino acids and long strings of carbon-based compounds. How can this be explained? Rocks and organic matter from plants and animals were pulverized and launched by the fountains of the great deep. Some merged to become meteoroids (as well as comets and asteroids). This team of scientists, on the other hand, say they don’t know how it all happened, but speculate that the organic matter already existed between the stars before the solar system and meteorites formed.
awstar

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