Scientist Sees Possible Signs Of Ancient Life On Mars In Rover Photos
Evidence that Mars once harbored alien life continues to mount. Just weeks after NASA's Curiosity rover detected spikes of methane in the Martian atmosphere--possible evidence of biological activity--a prominent geobiologist says she sees possible signs of past life in photos of the Martian landscape taken by the rover. "We can detect sedimentary structures in rocks on Mars using the rover images," Dr. Nora Noffke, an associate professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., told The Huffington Post in an email. For her research, Noffke looked at the structures seen in rocks on Mars and compared them to geological structures on Earth that are formed by microbes living in communities called microbial mats. In the abstract to a paper describing her research, Noffke detailed the similarities found between the structures on Earth and Mars: "The microbially induced sedimentary-like structures identified in Curiosity rover mission images do not have a random distribution.
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