Has the Curiosity Rover Found Evidence for Life on Mars?
- sharpdb
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
Hosts: Doug Sharp and Rich Geer
I am really getting tired of claims that say that scientists are finding signs of life on other planets.
The Curiosity Rover on Mars is analyzing chemicals dug up at the Gale Crater site. They are looking for signs of life that possibly existed billions of years ago. What did they discover?
1. Long chain hydrocarbons (alkanes)
a. Decane (10 carbon atoms)
b. Undecane (11 carbon atoms)
c. Dodecane (12 carbon atoms)
2. No evidence of amino acids
3. Methane
4. No guanine, cytosine, thymine, adenine.
5. Nitrogen heterocycle (unspecified)
6. Nitric oxide
From Nature: There is no evidence to suggest that the fixed nitrogen molecules found by the team were created by life. The surface of Mars is inhospitable for known forms of life. Instead, the team thinks the nitrates are ancient and likely came from non-biological processes like meteorite impacts and lightning in Mars’ distant past.
Features resembling dry riverbeds and the discovery of minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water suggest that Mars was more hospitable in the remote past. The Curiosity team has found evidence that other ingredients needed for life, such as liquid water and organic matter, were present on Mars at the Curiosity site in Gale Crater billions of years ago.
"Finding a biochemically accessible form of nitrogen is more support for the ancient Martian environment at Gale Crater being habitable" said Jennifer Stern of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Stern is lead author of a paper on this research published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science March 23.
Given the list of chemical compounds found on Mars by the Curiosity rover, the claim that this suggests that life existed on Mars billions of years ago is a LIE.
It is a deliberate deception. If Curiosity fails to find evidence for life, the mission would be considered an abysmal failure. Justification for funding of missions like this and other missions to extraterrestrial planets with similar purpose would be called into question.
Here is an experiment that scientists should undertake to justify their claims. Take the chemicals they have found on Mars and since life is an on-off switch, combine them to form a living system such as a bacterium, worm, insect, and show that they could have arisen from such chemicals spontaneously. This doesn’t take millions or billions of years; you can’t hide behind that.
We can give you purified amino acids and nucleotides already in the correct 3-dimensional enantiomer structure. Construct protein chains and DNA from your off-the-shelf chemicals and kick start a living cell.
Chemistry doesn’t allow it, and you can’t do it.
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