A 1.3 - billion - year - old tiny shard from a Martian meteorite has a surprising “ electric cell - comparable ” social structure which may have once held water system or lodge colonies of microbes , researcher say . Thefindings , published inAstrobiologylast month , add to the increasing grounds that beneath the surface , Mars had all the condition for life to organise and germinate .
Back in 1911 , about 40 stone fall near the Abu Hommos district of Alexandria , Egypt . ( One of them reportedly fell on a andiron . ) To examine the signature tune meteorite of the group — namedNakhla — a trio of researchers led byElias Chatzitheodoridis from National Technical University of Athenstook high - closure image of the sherd , revealing the atomic layer of the cloth within .
They receive an unusual feature embedded deep in the rock : a conspicuous clay ovoid . “ In many way it resemble a fossilized biological cell from Earth but it was challenging because it was doubtlessly from Mars , ” study co - authorIan Lyon at the University of Manchestersays in anews acquittance . “ Our research found that it probably was n’t a cell but that it did once control urine — weewee that had been heat , in all likelihood as a termination of an asteroid impact . ”
The vacuous place , at about 80 micrometer long and 60 microns astray , was far big than most tellurian bacteria on Earth . " Despite the extremely biomorphic overall cast of the ovoid , it is highly unbelievable that it itself was an organism,“Chatzitheodoridis differentiate Space.com . " However , it could have been formed directly by microorganisms , or it could entrap organic textile that came from elsewhere . ”
Large asteroid crush into Mars in the past could have produce long - lasting hydrothermal fields that could sustain life on the Red Planet , even in later epochs . “ It ’s not too dusty , it ’s not too harsh . liveliness as we be intimate it , in the frame of bacteria , for example , could be there,”Lyon says . “ It ’s about assemble together the case for life on Mars — it may have existed and in some form could live still . ”
The squad is now investigating possible biosignatures on Nakhla .
figure : JPL / NASA
