A brand new scientific evaluation means that identified non organic processes can not totally clarify the quantity of natural materials found in a rock collected on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover. Natural compounds are carbon containing molecules that kind the chemical constructing blocks of life as we all know it. They are often created by residing organisms, however some can even kind via pure chemical reactions that don’t contain life.
Curiosity, which has been exploring Gale Crater since 2012, carries a miniature chemistry lab designed to warmth rock samples and analyze the gases they launch. Utilizing this onboard laboratory, scientists detected a number of intriguing compounds in a drilled rock pattern.
Largest Natural Molecules But Discovered on Mars
In March 2025, researchers introduced they’d recognized hint quantities of decane, undecane, and dodecane. These are hydrocarbons, that means they’re made solely of carbon and hydrogen atoms. They belong to a gaggle of molecules that may be associated to fatty acids. Fatty acids are vital elements of cell membranes in residing organisms on Earth, though related molecules can even kind via purely geological reactions underneath sure situations.
The rock that contained these compounds is an historical mudstone situated in Gale Crater. Mudstone types from positive grained sediment that after settled in water, suggesting the realm could have hosted lakes billions of years in the past. Scientists proposed that the molecules detected by Curiosity could possibly be fragments of fatty acids that had been preserved within the rock over huge stretches of time.
Might Meteorites Clarify the Mars Organics
Curiosity’s devices can establish molecules, however they can’t straight decide how these molecules fashioned. Due to this limitation, researchers couldn’t inform whether or not the compounds had been produced by organic exercise or by non residing chemical processes.
To discover that query, scientists performed a observe up investigation targeted on identified non organic sources. One risk is that meteorites putting Mars delivered natural materials to the floor. Meteorites are identified to comprise carbon primarily based molecules, and impacts have been widespread all through Martian historical past. The crew evaluated whether or not this sort of exterior supply, together with different abiotic chemical reactions, might account for the degrees of natural compounds measured within the pattern.
Writing on Feb. 4 within the journal Astrobiology, the researchers reported that the non organic mechanisms they examined couldn’t totally account for the abundance of natural compounds detected by Curiosity. Based mostly on their evaluation, they concluded that it’s affordable to think about the chance that residing organisms might have contributed to the formation of those molecules.
This doesn’t imply life has been confirmed on Mars. As a substitute, it means that non residing explanations alone is probably not ample to clarify the info.
Reconstructing 80 Million Years of Radiation Publicity
To higher perceive how a lot natural materials could have initially been current, the scientists mixed laboratory radiation experiments, pc simulations, and Curiosity’s measurements. Mars lacks a thick environment and a worldwide magnetic subject like Earth’s, which suggests its floor is continually uncovered to cosmic radiation. Over time, this radiation can break aside complicated molecules.
The crew tried to “rewind the clock” by about 80 million years, which is how lengthy the rock is estimated to have been uncovered on the Martian floor. By modeling how radiation step by step destroys natural molecules, they calculated how a lot materials would have existed earlier than being degraded. Their outcomes point out that the unique amount of natural compounds was doubtless far better than what typical non organic processes are identified to supply.
Extra Analysis Wanted on Natural Molecules on Mars
The researchers emphasize that additional experiments are vital to know how rapidly natural molecules break down in Mars like rocks underneath Mars like environmental situations. Laboratory research that higher replicate Martian temperatures, radiation ranges, and chemistry will assist refine these estimates.
Till extra knowledge can be found, scientists can not draw agency conclusions about whether or not these compounds level to previous life or can in the end be defined via chemistry alone. What the findings do present is that the chemical story preserved in Martian rocks could also be extra complicated and extra intriguing than beforehand thought.
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