Microbes grown on Mars’ ruddy crust hint at signs of life
Everybody must Mars stone…
Ancient water and bombardment by asteroids left behind Noachian terrain, regions that may house signs of ancient alien life. By better understanding how chemolithotrophs behave within samples ofMartian crust, we can refine how we search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.
“A primary aim of the upcoming Mars exploration missions (Mars 2020 and ExoMars) is to search for signs of ancient life. Rovers specifically equipped and well suited to search for signs of life will traverse and explore the surface of Mars, focusing on the Noachian terrains with moisture-rich ancient geological history and mineral springs that could have been colonized by microorganisms,” researchers describe in an article published inNature Communications Earth & Environment.
Metallosphaera sedula, an extreme lifeform that thrives in hot acids, was successfully grown in samples of an actual piece of Mars called Black Beauty (or the Noachian Martian breccia Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 meteorite). The material within this rare Martian sample which arrived on Earth long ago is thought to be 4.5 billion years old.
“Black Beauty is among the rarest substances on Earth, it is a unique Martian breccia formed by various pieces of Martian crust (some of them are dated at 4.42 ± 0.07 billion years) and ejected millions years ago from the Martian surface. We had to choose a pretty bold approach of crushing few grams of preciousMartian rockto recreate the possible look of Mars’ earliest and simplest life form,” explainsTetyana Milojevic, head of the Space Biochemistry group at the University of Vienna.
Samples of M. sedula consumed minerals from the Martian rock, transforming it into biomineral deposits. Researchers studied these deposits down to the atomic scale. They found patterns in the chemistry and geology of the material which should resemble evidence we would see of ancient Martian life.
Grown onMartian soil, M. sedula formed capsules of iron, magnesium, and aluminum phosphates. Just a billionth of a meter long, complex crystalline deposits composed of iron, as well as silicates and oxides of manganese, formed both within and between cells.
As we continue to explore the Red Planet, this new study shows us what to look for, in our quest for signs of ancient life onMars.
This article was originally published onThe Cosmic CompanionbyJames Maynard, founder and publisher of The Cosmic Companion. He is a New England native turned desert rat in Tucson, where he lives with his lovely wife, Nicole, and Max the Cat. You can read this original piecehere.
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Exploring the wonders of the Cosmos, one mystery at a time.Exploring the wonders of the Cosmos, one mystery at a time.
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