On Mars, there were elements for life | Photos | Video - Corriere della Sera

• 6
• 10

ANOTHER TOPIC HIDE

The discovery thanks to the rover Curiosity of NASA

Mars had all the elements for life
But no direct evidence of living things

In Gale Crater 3.6 billion years ago there was a lake and there were carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen and phosphorus

On Mars had life possible. The water of the large lake that occupied the Gale Crater, and then carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen and phosphorus: these are the key ingredients for life found by the rover Curiosity. They are described in six papers in the journal Science and presented in a press conference held in San Francisco, at the conference of ‘ American Geological Union.

Curiosity in Gale Crater NASA

WAS A CRATER LAKE – The analyzes indicate that about 3.6 billion years ago the Gale crater where Curiosity arrived August 6, 2012, was a large lake and “a habitable environment” capable of hosting chemiolitoautotrofi microorganisms, ie capable of obtaining energy from rocks and minerals necessary for their existence. On Earth, similar bacteria live inside caves and hydrothermal vents.

On Mars had all the elements for life

NO DIRECT EVIDENCE – None of the articles provides direct evidence of the existence of life forms on Mars neither the present nor the past, but it is the first time that Mars finds all elements necessary for the existence of bacteria such as those chemiolitoautotrofi very simple. The items were found in sedimentary rocks of the area of ??the crater called Gale Yellowknife Bay and tell the story of a lake existed for a long time (tens or hundreds of thousands of years), with low salinity waters in a more or less neutral. “We are able to demonstrate that the Gale Crater was an ancient lake with adequate characteristics to support a Martian biosphere based on chemiolitoautotrofi,” he wrote on Science John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

DATA “CONCLUDING» – According to Enrico Flamini, scientific coordinator of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), those collected by Curiosity data can be considered “inconclusive.” And in the light of these, it becomes even more important to the ExoMars mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) of 2016 to 2018. “At this point Exomars becomes a core mission,” said Flamini. “Curiosity has onboard tools to detect organic material, while ExoMars will have them. On similar grounds I am sure we will have some surprises. “

Parmitano: “A REASON MORE» – the same opinion Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, recently returned after a long mission on the International Space Station. “Now there is an even bigger reason to go and put your feet on the red sand of Mars, especially at a time like this, in which the space flight seems a luxury that you can do without.”

Editors Online