A breakthrough discovery on Mars. Maybe change the textbooks

Scientists have long believed that life once existed on Mars, and the Gale crater is actually the remains of an ancient lake. While not all pieces of the puzzle are clear and we don't have answers to every question, another piece seems to suggest that the Red Planet was teeming with life billions of years ago.

A sensational discovery on Mars

The Curiosity rover discovered rock material on Mars that is filled with unusual amounts of manganese. It is a mineral that occurs abundantly on Earth, including in lakes. Moreover, it is closely related to microbial life.

On Earth, these types of deposits happen all the time due to the high oxygen content in our atmosphere, produced by photosynthetic life and microbes that help catalyze these manganese oxidation reactions.

– said Patrick Gasda, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Does this mean that there was once life on Mars and the Gale crater is really the remains of a huge lake? These types of conclusions suggest themselves, but despite this, scientists remain cautious.

We have no evidence of life on Mars, and the mechanism by which oxygen was produced in Mars' ancient atmosphere is unclear, so how manganese oxide was formed and concentrated here is truly a mystery. These findings point to larger processes taking place in the Martian atmosphere or surface waters and show that more work needs to be done to understand oxidation on Mars.

– added the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

Scientists intend to further study the surface of the Red Planet to better understand all the processes that occurred on Mars.