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September 9, 2025<\/p>\n
4 min read<\/p>\n
This Rock May Hold Proof of Life on Mars<\/p>\n
The Perseverance rover\u2019s new findings set the stage for bringing Martian samples back to Earth to test whether microbes once inhabited the Red Planet<\/p>\n
By Humberto Basilio edited by Lee Billings<\/span><\/p>\n NASA\u2019s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie, made up of 62 individual images, on July 23, 2024. A rock nicknamed \u201cCheyava Falls,\u201d which bears tantalizing features suggesting it may contain ancient microbial fossils, is to the left of the rover near the center of the image.<\/p>\n The most enthralling rock yet found on Mars\u2014a speckled hunk of mudstone that just may contain evidence of ancient alien life\u2014is still worth getting excited about.<\/p>\n Teased last year in a preliminary announcement from NASA, that\u2019s the official conclusion of a peer-reviewed paper, published today in Nature, that reports a deeper analysis of the curious outcrop. Were it found on Earth instead of Mars, the rock\u2019s speckles would likely be interpreted as evidence for a microbial feeding frenzy that occurred long ago. But getting certainty about what this rock truly contains likely requires hauling it off the Red Planet and delivering it back to Earth\u2014an ambitious multiphase mission that NASA calls Mars Sample Return.<\/p>\n The rock in question is packed with organic carbon\u2014another promising prerequisite for life\u2014and lies within a lithic formation called Bright Angel, which is exposed along a channel called Neretva Vallis. Eons ago, that now dry channel was a river valley, formed by water rushing into and feeding a lake-and-delta system in what\u2019s now known as Jezero Crater. Those apparently warm, wet origins led to NASA targeting Jezero as the landing spot for the space agency\u2019s Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the site for any past or present signs of life since it touched down in 2021.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n \u201cThis result gives us reason to consider the possibility that Mars was host to microbial life,\u201d says the new study\u2019s co-author Joel Hurowitz, a geoscientist at Stony Brook University. Although this is nowhere close to direct, clinching evidence of Martian life, Hurowitz and his team hope that the findings help scientists \u201cmake progress in our quest to understand whether there\u2019s life on other planets in the solar system and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n After NASA\u2019s initial teaser, scientists who were eager for more information paid close attention to a presentation by Hurowitz in mid-March of this year at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in the Woodlands, Tex. During his talk, Hurowitz recounted how he and his colleagues on the Perseverance team had found a carbon-rich rock with small patches ranging from black to dark blue to dark green, which they called \u201cpoppy seeds,\u201d as well as larger patches with dark-toned rims and lighter-toned centers, which they referred to as \u201cleopard spots.\u201d They called the rock itself \u201cCheyava Falls.\u201d<\/p>\n Using multiple instruments on Perseverance, an early analysis showed that the poppy seeds and rims of the leopard spots were enriched with iron and phosphorus, while the centers of the leopard spots had abundant iron and sulfur. That distribution of elements hints at both types of patches forming from organic carbon reacting with iron and sulfate minerals\u2014a process that, on Earth, is typically kick-started by certain types of microbes to fuel their metabolism. But it can also occur abiotically via chemical reactions that happen at high temperatures.<\/p>\n In their Nature study, Hurowitz and his co-authors elaborate on the likely mineralogical composition of Cheyava Falls and its speckles, as well as on the conditions in which it probably formed. Perseverance\u2019s measurements suggested the speckles contained the minerals vivianite, an iron phosphate, and greigite, an iron sulfide\u2014and that both formed in close association with organic carbon. On Earth, vivianite frequently forms in lakes and coastal sediments where microbes use iron in their metabolism. Greigite tends to form when microbes break down sulfate. When found together on Earth, these minerals and organic molecules are usually considered a sort of biosignature, a physical sign of past or present life\u2014at least if they can be shown to have formed at low temperatures rather than via hotter, less life-friendly conditions.<\/p>\n This image from July 23, 2024 shows the \u201cCheyava Falls\u201d rock (left) with a dark hole where NASA\u2019s Perseverance Mars rover took the \u201cSapphire Canyon\u201d core sample; the white patch is where the rover abraded the rock to investigate its composition. A rock nicknamed \u201cSteamboat Mountain\u201d (right) also shows an abrasion patch.<\/p>\n NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/ASU\/MSSS<\/p>\n The Nature study correspondingly details further analyses that suggest a low-temperature origin for the speckles\u2014that is, they seem to have arisen in relatively clement conditions near the surface, where life could possibly thrive, rather than the inhospitably hot depths of the Martian subsurface. \u201cWe believe that these features happened early in the life of the sediment, shortly after it was deposited and likely before it had been \u2018lithified\u2019 to form hard rock,\u201d Hurowitz says.<\/p>\n The team stops short of calling the speckles a sign of life, however, preferring the more prudent label of \u201cpotential biosignature.\u201d Further evidence for or against a possibly biological origin, they say, is unlikely to arrive unless and until NASA brings a sample of the rock back to Earth for more thorough studies. In July 2024 Perseverance gathered just such a specimen from the rock\u2014a core sample dubbed \u201cSapphire Canyon\u201d\u2014but NASA\u2019s beleaguered, multibillion-dollar plan to bring this and other samples back to Earth is far from a sure thing, given that it was targeted for cancellation in the White House\u2019s proposed budget earlier this year.<\/p>\n \u201cThese results are super exciting,\u201d says Janice Bishop, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, who has tested chemical reactions using analogue Martian rocks and co-authored a commentary that accompanies the new Nature paper. For life to form, she explains, reactions involving organic material are necessary to build amino acids and other simple-but-crucial molecules. These reactions between substances also demonstrate energy sources that could have been used by early microorganisms. \u201cThere is no evidence of microbes or other life forms on Mars yet, but our search is just beginning,\u201d Bishop says.<\/p>\n Yet because these Mars rocks are billions of years old, Bishop says, that offers abundant time in which the speckles could conceivably have emerged from abiotic processes: the small pockets of reduced vivianite and sulfides in the ancient mudstones at Jezero Crater could have been formed long ago by run-of-the-mill chemical reactions from organic compounds or other sources rather than by hungry microbes.<\/p>\n More than once, scientists have declared they\u2019ve found life on Mars based on piecemeal evidence\u2014and each time so far, those claims have been ultimately dismissed as misinterpretations of entirely abiotic phenomena. Time will tell whether this latest case proves to be part of that same trend\u2014or a genuine new discovery.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" September 9, 2025 4 min read This Rock May Hold Proof of Life on Mars The Perseverance rover\u2019s new findings set the stage for bringing Martian samples back to Earth to test whether microbes once inhabited the Red Planet By Humberto Basilio edited by Lee Billings NASA\u2019s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie, made up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[835,1562,337,369,1034],"class_list":{"0":"post-20352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-answer","9":"tag-hold","10":"tag-life","11":"tag-mars","12":"tag-rock"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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