In a recent discovery, scientists have found out that life existed on Mars many many years ago by shocking evidence that they detected on the Red planet. The Curiosity rover of NASA has successfully detected Boron on the dusty red surface of Mars.
Boron is believed to be the key ingredient that leads to the formation of life and finding Boron on Mars is a great achievement for researchers and scientists who are dedicatedly working day and night to find out whether life existed on Mars or not. Scientists always hypothesized that all the evidence or presence of life on Mars might have been forced underground when the planet became converted to a ‘frigid desert’ due to a powerful disaster.
Patrick Gasda, a post doctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, informed that boron is an essential ingredient in RNA making and we all know that RNA is one of the building blocks of life. So, discovering boron on Mars strengthens the fact that life was possible on the planet previously and the red planet was once habitable. He also added that borates act as a bridge between RNA and simple organic molecule and without RNA there is no life.
Finding boron on Mars signifies that many chemical reactions would have occurred on the Red planet giving rise to organics. Rna is called ribonucleic acid which helps in decoding as well as expression of genes from DNA. Also, the RNA is unstable as it contains ribose sugar, and boron is that substance which makes it stable and does not allow it to decompose quickly.
The study containing Gasda’s research was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. It depicts how the Curiosity Rover discovered boron inside calcium sulfate mineral veins present on the rocky surface. That means boron was there inside Mars ground water and hence it indicates that Gale Crater, where the Curiosity is now present, might have been a habitable area in ancient times. This might boost up the theory which claims that life got transferred from Mars to Earth through an Asteroid.
Also if boron is what we called carriers of life, then we might also be known as Martians, as claimed by an astronomer named Caleb Sharf. Many also claimed that Aliens were there on the red planet in the past. But the mystery about Mars and its ability to have life on it continues. And now Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, is gearing up to send humans to Mars by 2030.
