Scientists have been searching for life on Mars. Unmanned missions have been sent in hopes of finding life there. Currently, no substantial evidence has officially been found, but has evidence of life on Mars already found long back?
The debate continues whether life on Mars exists today. It will likely continue until solid evidence is found. A group of scientists though think that evidence has already come out awhile back. An earlier unmanned NASA mission might have stumbled upon life on Mars already.
The Spirit rover mission has been to Mars a decade ago. During that time it has taken images and samples from Mars. Now some scientists are going over those images and data collected. They say that some rocky outcrops on the Gusev crater have opaline silica.
Steven Ruff and Jack Farmer from Arizona State University (ASU) have gone over the images from Home Plate, which is a plateau of rocks at the Columbia Hills area located at the crater. This are is said to have active hot springs, and silica outcrops in the area. These, they contend, are biosignatures of past life.
Other signs of life have been found, such as organic molecules trapped in rocks, according to the Sunday Express. There are also signs of stromatolites that have been found. These are formed when microbes build colonies in moist environments.
The two researchers have compared these with some of the silica deposits at El Tatio, which is near the Atacama Desert in Chile, as The Inquisitr reports. The conditions on El Tatio are said to be the same conditions that can be found in the Gusev crater on Mars. If it is proven, then the case for life on Mars would have become stronger than ever.
Already there have been findings by another team of scientists that life on Mars might have already been found. The Viking Mars mission back in 1976 is said to have found life on Mars. With this new evidence, could it be that evidence for life on Mars has already been found long back? Perhaps having the two pieces of evidence together might make a stronger case for it.
