DOES THAT TASTE LIKE ALIENS? SALT ON MARS COULD DETERMINE IF LIFE EVER EXISTED THERE
Curiosity on MarsCuriosity's selfie on Mars. Credit: NASA
Curiosity's selfie on Mars. Credit: NASA
DOES THAT TASTE LIKE ALIENS? SALT ON MARS COULD DETERMINE IF LIFE EVER EXISTED THEREContributed by
Elizabeth Rayne
@quothravenrayne
May 25, 2021, 8:10 PM EDT (Updated)
To answer David Bowie’s question that forever floats dreamily in space — is there life on Mars? — what we might need to ask beforehand is whether there is salt on Mars.
As many scientists will repeat ad nauseam, organics don’t necessarily mean aliens. Many organic compounds arise from abiological processes, but biologically produced organics could possibly be a sign of living organisms or all that remains of something extinct. This isn’t just sodium chloride, though NaCl is a necessary electrolyte lost through physical activity, which explains why you find it in Gatorade. Other salts like acetates and oxalates are fuel for some life-forms.
While NASA’s Curiosity rover continues to crawl over the reddish, radiation-blasted wasteland, organic geochemist James M.T. Lewis is in search of salts through its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) lab and Chemistry and Mineralogy Instrument (CheMin) on board. He led a study recently published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
“On Earth, life is one of the processes that can concentrate organic salts,” Lewis tells SYFY WIRE. “Any process on Mars that concentrates organic salts and organic matter is really interesting to us. We're saying that organic salts are a really good explanation for a lot of SAM data, but we aren't yet completely sure if they're present, and if they are, what forms they might be in.”
More:
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/organic-salt-on-mars-could-be-proof-of-life