mars signal of past life

mars signal of past life

To help make their case, the researchers have contrasted Spirit's study of "Home Plate" a plateau of layered rocks that the robot explored during the early part of its third year on Mars with features found within active hot spring/geyser discharge channels at a site in northern Chile called El Tatio.

Steven Ruff and Jack Farmer of the university's School of Earth and Space Exploration — shows that the nodular and digitate silica structures at El Tatio that most closely resemble those on Mars include complex sedimentary structures produced by a combination of biotic and abiotic processes.

"Although fully abiotic processes are not ruled out for the Martian silica structures, they satisfy an a priori definition of potential biosignatures," the researchers wrote in the study.

Previously, a NASA science team defined a potential biosignature as "an object, substance and/or pattern that might have a biological origin and thus compels investigators to gather more data before reaching a conclusion as to the presence or absence of life."

"Because we can neither prove nor disprove a biological origin for the microstromatolite-like digitate silica structures at Home Plate, they constitute a potential biosignature according to this definition," Ruff and Farmer wrote.

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