Watch the video: Sensation on Mars -NASA discovers conditions for the origin of life.
NASA researchers have made a fascinating discovery on Mars. Mars rover Curiosity has sent images back to Earth showing hexagonal cracks in our planetary neighbor’s dry mud. For the NASA scientists, the structures are proof that the planet once had an Earth-like climate. And indeed, they are reminiscent of structures on Earth from climate zones in which wet and dry cycles alternate, as these images from Portugal show. Here the cracks are formed in clayey soil that regularly floods and dries out in the hot sun to form hexagonal structures like this. On Mars, the structures were found in a transition zone between a clayey layer and a layer enriched with saline minerals. For the researchers, the finds from Mount Sharp in the Gale crater are a sensation because they assume that wet-dry cycles could possibly be the prerequisite for the emergence of life. Because although water is the prerequisite for life, the emergence of life requires a balance – not too dry and not too wet. There is a difference between the ideal conditions for survival and the conditions for chemical reactions that give rise to life in the first place. Indeed, because these conditions have been conserved on Mars, they may have given researchers the first opportunity to study the beginnings of life. On Earth, this phase has long been buried by the movements of the tectonic plates. Mars has no tectonic plates, so much older periods of the planet’s history have been preserved, the researchers said.