The search for life on mars It is one of the great current obsessions of the human being. It’s not about looking for little green men, of course. But if any way microscopic life, present or past, indicating that our planet is not the only one that can support living organisms. It would work on other planets, but Mars is one of the most explored, with a large number of robots still active taking samples and working on its surface. However, none have managed to find anything. And, according to a new study, it could be that this isn’t because there’s no life on Mars, but rather because we don’t have the technology or the right databases to find it.
The authors of the work, coming from the Autonomous University of Chile, came to this conclusion after using the most advanced space technology in the Atacama Desert. This, besides being the driest non-polar place on Earthhas a composition that makes it a great martian analogue. For this reason, some specific points of its geography can be used to fine-tune the instruments that look for life on mars.
With them, they have seen that robots could be walking on microscopic life that would go unnoticed. The genetic material of these organisms have been baptized as dark microbiome, for its analogy with the famous dark matter of the Universe. But is there a solution then? It doesn’t seem easy to find one. on siteso the key will be to send samples for your analysis on Earth.
Search for life on Mars in the Atacama desert
The Atacama desert, in Chile, presents an ancient delta, called Red stone, which contains sand and rock rich in hematite and mudstone. That is, it presents a mineralogy similar to that of the red planet.
Therefore, it is a good setting to test the instruments for the search for life on Mars. Thus, when these scientists used said instrumentation, together with the most advanced technology of classification of microorganisms by their genome, they saw something curious. “Almost 9 percent of the genetic sequences obtained by means of the next generation sequencing fell into the category Not classifiedwhile the remaining 40% of the sequences could not be assigned to anything more specific than the highest of the taxa, such as orders or domains.
This reveals what they qualify as a high degree of phylogenetic indeterminacy. That is, some microorganisms are detected by genetic sequencing, but it is not known exactly what they are. The reason could be that, in reality, they are remains of microorganisms that inhabited the delta in the past and, having no existing relatives at present, do not appear in the classification databases.
If that is already complicated to analyze on Earth, it is much more so on sitehence the first solution proposed by these scientists is analyze the samples on Earth. And it is something that is already being worked on. It is expected to be able to return samples to our planet in the 2030s or, at most, in that of 2040. The good news is that, by then, the genetic techniques needed to search for life on Mars could also be very advanced.
Only in this way will it be possible to unravel this mysterious microbial dark matter that is driving scientists crazy.