Study nixes Mars life in meteorite found in Antarctica

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A 4 billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a splash present connected Earth decades agone contains nary grounds of ancient, primitive Martian beingness aft all, scientists reported Thursday.

In 1996, a NASA-led squad announced that integrated compounds successful the stone appeared to person been near by surviving creatures. Other scientists were skeptical and researchers chipped distant astatine that premise implicit the decades, astir precocious by a squad led by the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Andrew Steele.

Tiny samples from the meteorite amusement the carbon-rich compounds are really the effect of h2o — astir apt salty, oregon briny, h2o — flowing implicit the stone for a prolonged period, Steele said. The findings look successful the diary Science.

During Mars' bedewed and aboriginal past, astatine slightest 2 impacts occurred adjacent the rock, heating the planet's surrounding surface, earlier a 3rd interaction bounced it disconnected the reddish satellite and into abstraction millions of years ago. The 4-pound (2-kilogram) stone was recovered successful Antarctica successful 1984.

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Groundwater moving done the cracks successful the rock, portion it was inactive connected Mars, formed the tiny globs of c that are present, according to the researchers. The aforesaid happening tin hap connected Earth and could assistance explicate the beingness of methane successful Mars' atmosphere, they said.

But 2 scientists who took portion successful the archetypal survey took contented with these latest findings, calling them “disappointing." In a shared email, they said they basal by their 1996 observations.

“While the information presented incrementally adds to our cognition of (the meteorite), the mentation is hardly novel, nor is it supported by the research,” wrote Kathie Thomas-Keprta and Simon Clemett, astromaterial researchers astatine NASA's Johnson Space Center successful Houston.

“Unsupported speculation does thing to resoluteness the conundrum surrounding the root of integrated matter” successful the meteorite, they added.

According to Steele, advances successful exertion made his team's caller findings possible.

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He commended the measurements by the archetypal researchers and noted that their life-claiming proposal “was a tenable interpretation" astatine the time. He said helium and his squad — which includes NASA, German and British scientists — took attraction to contiguous their results “for what they are, which is simply a precise breathtaking find astir Mars and not a survey to disprove” the archetypal premise.

This uncovering “is immense for our knowing of however beingness started connected this satellite and helps refine the techniques we request to find beingness elsewhere connected Mars, oregon Enceladus and Europa,” Steele said successful an email, referring to Saturn and Jupiter’s moons with subsurface oceans.

The lone mode to beryllium whether Mars ever had oregon inactive has microbial life, according to Steele, is to bring samples to Earth for analysis. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover already has collected six samples for instrumentality to Earth successful a decennary oregon so; 3 twelve samples are desired.

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Millions of years aft drifting done space, the meteorite landed connected an icefield successful Antarctica thousands of years ago. The tiny gray-green fragment got its sanction — Allan Hills 84001 — from the hills wherever it was found.

Just this week, a portion of this meteorite was utilized successful a first-of-its-kind experimentation aboard the International Space Station. A mini scanning electron microscope examined the sample; Thomas-Keprta operated it remotely from Houston. Researchers anticipation to usage the microscope to analyse geologic samples successful abstraction — connected the satellite 1 day, for illustration — and debris that could ruin presumption instrumentality oregon endanger astronauts.

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