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Latest life on Mars hint

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Gillespie Lake Outcrop on Mars
Martian rock bed outcrop/NASA

A faint hope from Space.com:

A careful study of images taken by the NASA rover Curiosity has revealed intriguing similarities between ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars and structures shaped by microbes on Earth. The findings suggest, but do not prove, that life may have existed earlier on the Red Planet.

The photos were taken as the Mars rover Curiosity drove through the Gillespie Lake outcrop in Yellowknife Bay, a dry lakebed that underwent seasonal flooding billions of years ago. Mars and Earth shared a similar early history. The Red Planet was a much warmer and wetter world back then.

On Earth, carpet-like colonies of microbes trap and rearrange sediments in shallow bodies of water such as lakes and coastal areas, forming distinctive features that fossilize over time. These structures, known as microbially-induced sedimentary structures (or MISS), are found in shallow water settings all over the world and in ancient rocks spanning Earth’s history.

In a paper published online last month in the journal Astrobiology (the print version comes out this week), Noffke details the striking morphological similarities between Martian sedimentary structures in the Gillespie Lake outcrop (which is at most 3.7 billion years old) and microbial structures on Earth.

Of course, only fossil remnants of the bacteria can provide definitive evidence.

See also: Don’t let Mars fool you. Those exoplanets teem with life!

Hat tip: Timothy Kershner

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Comments
Mars only existed for 6000 years. As on earth sedimentary formations were all made instantly from mechanisms in water flow. So all one needs to do is account for such things on Mars. If accurate observation of sed rocks etc. In fact YEC would welcome sed rock layers . It would show how on earth they were created. Most likely from impacts hitting mars that melted ice . so flash great floods instantly, as on earth, creating sed layers. in fact YEC would predict this on mars if it was accepted there was water or rather the water from the ice. Maybe money for mars trips would be a good idea.Robert Byers
January 9, 2015
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