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Nature subjournal: Life on Mars, can we detect it?

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2023-03-07

自1970年代启动“维京”(Viking)任务以来，人类为寻找火星上的生命迹象一直在反复尝试。

　　Since the launch of the Viking mission in the 1970s, humans have been repeatedly trying to find signs of life on Mars.

　　Now, half a century later, NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers launched to Mars have found only low levels of simple organic molecules.

　　These results raise questions about whether the current level of equipment or the properties of the material inside the Martian rock limit our ability to find evidence of life.

　　Recently, researchers from the Spanish Astrobiology Research Center, the Universidad Libre de Chile, NASA, and other seasons published a paper in the Nature subjournal Nature Communications titled: Dark microbiome and extremely low organics in Atacama fossil delta The research paper is entitled: Dark microbiome and extremely low organics in Atacama fossil delta unveil Mars life detection limits.

　　The study suggests that current scientific instruments deployed on Mars may not be sensitive enough to detect possible signs of life in the Martian environment.

　　In this study, Armando Azua-Bustos et al. tested current instruments along with advanced laboratory equipment or possibly sent to Mars, using them to analyze samples from the "Red Stone" (Red Stone). Red Stone is the fossilized remains of sediments from a river delta located in the intellectual Atacama Desert. These sediments were formed under extremely arid conditions 160-100 million years ago and have similar geological properties to the Jezero crater being studied on Mars by Trailblazer.

　　Next-generation sequencing (NGS) characterization of characteristic redstone samples from redstone sites

　　The team used highly sensitive laboratory techniques to discover the mixed biology of extinct and extant microorganisms. Microbial culture and gene sequencing results show that many of these DNA sequences are derived primarily from the unidentifiable "Dark microbiome", with much of the genetic material coming from microbes that have never been described.

　　However, analysis of the instruments in service on Mars shows that these devices can barely detect molecular fossil features at the detection limit. If there was indeed life on Mars billions of years ago, low levels of organic matter would have been present, and the results of this study suggest that it would be difficult or impossible to detect such low levels of organic matter with the technology currently in use on Mars.

　　Finally, the team emphasizes the need to bring the acquired Martian geological samples back to Earth in order to draw the final conclusion on whether there was life on Mars.

　　Link to the paper:https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36172-1