Experts from the Center for Astrobiology (CAB) studied an ancient river bed in the Atacama desert, Chile, to analyze the detection limits of life in Marte with the current state of technology. Despite scientific advances in recent decades, they concluded that finding remains of life on the red planet will be “difficult, if not impossible”.
The document, which was published in the journal Nature Communicationsdetermined that the current detection instruments of life on marsand others that are going to be sent soon, could not being sensitive enough to find traces of life on the red planet
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“The stone (from the Atacama desert) coincides with that detected by terrestrial instruments in the Red planet. Similarly, low levels of organic compounds will be difficult, if not impossible, to detect in Martian rocksdepending on the instrument and the technique used,” they detailed in the document.
The study was carried out by an international group of researchers, in which members of the CAB participated in collaboration with the Higher Council for Scientific Research and the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA). The analysis was carried out in “Piedra Roja”an analogue of Marte in the Atacama desert. The area is located in northern Chile and would be the remnant of an ancient fluvial delta that was formed under arid conditions in the Jurassic period, more than 100 million years ago.
In this place, the researchers discovered that the landscape was formed by a variety of sediments interspersed with their own sandstones and clays, which would confirm that it is a fluvial bed. Added to this, detected an abundant presence of hematitean oxide of iron found in Marte and gives it its characteristic red color.
This area shares geological similarities with Marsspecifically with the areas that the robot Perseverance from NASA. In addition, there they discovered a variety of microorganisms difficult to classify, which they called “Dark Microbiome“. They also found different “biosignatures” (substances that can indicate the presence of life in a place), but at the detection limit of the instruments present in a research laboratory.
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“What was remarkable was that by using a variety of instruments that are on or soon to be on Mars, and depending on the biosignature you were looking for, several of these instruments could barely detect themor simply they were not able to do it”, indicated Armando Azua-Bustos, a CSIC researcher in the Department of Planetology and Habitability of the CAB and co-author of the study.
As noted by the CAB, These findings demonstrate the importance of bringing samples of Marte to the earth to be able to analyze them with the most powerful detection techniques available in laboratories. In this sense, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and other institutions are working to carry out this task.
“It is very important to have terrestrial models that are as similar to Marte possible to understand how the different biosignatures have been conserved and fine-tuning procedures and technology to find them”, pointed out the researcher Víctor Parro, co-author of the work.
MB / MCP
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