MARS, EARTH? SAME, SAME, BUT DIFFERENT! In order to investigate the possible origins of life on Mars and Earth, a new rover, slated to launch in 2020, will focus on analysing soil and ice samples with a DNA-sequencing microchip. With more and more evidence to suggest that life did indeed once exist on the red planet, scientists are turning their attention to questions raised regarding how life started there in the first place. The project is based on the assumption that life on Earth and Mars (if ever it existed) could have a shared genetic ancestry. During the “Late Heavy Bombardment” period, around 3.5 – 4 billion years ago, there were a number of major impact events in the solar system. "About 1 billion tons of asteroids zoomed through space between Earth and Mars, possibly cross-contaminating the two planets". In such an event, it is likely that either life on Earth came from Mars, or life on Mars came from Earth on the back of asteroids. “If there’s life on Mars and it is based on RNA and DNA, you would get not one but many sequences and you’d be able to understand the extend of ‘relativeness’ of any Earth life,” said study lead author Christopher Carr, of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 06:49:50 +0000
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