New York Times: Mars Rover Finds Stronger Potential for Life
For
lifeless chemical compounds to organize themselves into something
alive, scientists generally agree, three sets of things must be present:
■ Standing water and an energy source.
■ Five basic elements: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus and nitrogen.
■ And time, lots of time.
In its search for environments where life might have started on Mars, the Curiosity rover has found the standing water, the energy and the key elements with the right atomic charges. As a result, scientists have concluded that at least some of the planet must have been habitable long ago.
But
the period when all conditions were right was counted in hundreds to
thousands of years, a very small opening by origin-of-life standards.
That
has now changed. John P. Grotzinger of Caltech, the project scientist
for the mission, reported at a news conference on Monday that the
rover’s yearlong trek to Mount Sharp provided strong new evidence that
Gale Crater had large lakes, rivers and deltas, on and off, for millions
to tens of millions of years. The geology shows that even when the
surface water dried up, plenty of water would have remained underground,
he said.
Continue Reading at ..... http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/science/-stronger-signs-of-life-on-mars.html
