Life on Earth may have come from Mars
31 Aug 2013 5:10 AM IST
Men are from Mars - and so are women! New evidence has emerged to support the long-debated theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars, scientists say.
According to research presented at the 23rd Goldschmidt conference in Florence, an oxidised mineral form of the element molybdenum, which may have been crucial to the origin of life, could only have been available on the surface of Mars and not on Earth.
‘It’s only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidised that it is able to influence how early life formed,’ said Professor Steven Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the US.
‘This form of molybdenum couldn’t have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did. It’s yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet,’ Benner said.
In the research presented at the conference, Benner tackled two of the paradoxes which make it difficult for scientists to understand how life could have started on Earth.
The first is dubbed by Benner as the ‘tar paradox’. All living things are made of organic matter, but if you add energy such as heat or light to organic molecules and leave them to themselves, they don’t create life. Instead, they turn into something more like tar, oil or asphalt.
‘Certain elements seem able to control the propensity of organic materials to turn into tar, particularly boron and molybdenum, so we believe that minerals containing both were fundamental to life first starting,’ said Benner.
‘Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars; we now believe that the oxidised form of molybdenum was there too,’ he said. The second paradox is that life would have struggled to start on the early
Earth because it was likely to have been totally covered by water.
According to research presented at the 23rd Goldschmidt conference in Florence, an oxidised mineral form of the element molybdenum, which may have been crucial to the origin of life, could only have been available on the surface of Mars and not on Earth.
‘It’s only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidised that it is able to influence how early life formed,’ said Professor Steven Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the US.
‘This form of molybdenum couldn’t have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did. It’s yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet,’ Benner said.
In the research presented at the conference, Benner tackled two of the paradoxes which make it difficult for scientists to understand how life could have started on Earth.
The first is dubbed by Benner as the ‘tar paradox’. All living things are made of organic matter, but if you add energy such as heat or light to organic molecules and leave them to themselves, they don’t create life. Instead, they turn into something more like tar, oil or asphalt.
‘Certain elements seem able to control the propensity of organic materials to turn into tar, particularly boron and molybdenum, so we believe that minerals containing both were fundamental to life first starting,’ said Benner.
‘Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars; we now believe that the oxidised form of molybdenum was there too,’ he said. The second paradox is that life would have struggled to start on the early
Earth because it was likely to have been totally covered by water.
Next Story
