Last updated on Jan. 2, 2017
"New analysis from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover shows that the red planet is likely flush with organics. "I am convinced that organics are all over Mars," said Jennifer Eigenbrode, a biogeochemist and geologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "They're all over the surface and they're probably through the rock record. What that means is something we'll have to talk about," Eigenbrode said last week during a National Academy of Sciences workshop about the search for life beyond Earth." Unquote. Quoted from [
link to www.space.com]
In view of the above, I try to answer the following questions:
1. Did meteorites produce all of those organics on Mars?
"Organics all over Mars" are a huge amount of organics. Meteorites could not have produced all of the organics that are all over Mars and probably through the rock record, as only two meteorites were found in Gale Crater, Mars.
2. Did the organics originate from non-biology?
The above-mentioned organics were mostly drilled from Martian rocks that were formed less than 3.9 billion years ago. Before that time, four billion years ago, Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere (see [
link to www.theguardian.com (secure)] ). The oxygen-rich atmosphere made it impossible to synthesize organic molecules from inorganic molecules (note 1).
3. Did the organics come before life?
As mentioned above, in the oxygen-rich atmosphere of Mars, there was no way for inorganic compounds to form organics. Organics found on Mars include macromolecules (See paragraph 6 in [
link to www.inverse.com (secure)] Only life can produce macromolecules (see [
link to wretchfossil.blogspot.tw] ).
In conclusion, at least some of the organics on Mars must have originated from past life on Mars.
Note 1: “Actually, as early as the 1930s, Alexander I. Oparin in Russia and J.B.S. Haldane in England had pointed out that the organic compounds needed for life could not have formed on the Earth if the atmosphere was as rich in oxygen (oxidizing) as it is today. Oxygen, which takes hydrogen atoms from other compounds, interferes with the reactions that transform simple organic molecules into complex ones.” (quoted from paragraph 16 in [
link to www.indiana.edu] )
Last Edited by Faceless2 on 01/03/2017 03:10 AM
Taiwan
