Curiouser and curiouser

NASA’s Curiosity rover continued to deliver the goods in 2020, but perhaps it’s most tantalising discovery was that of organic compounds on the surface of Mars. The compounds, called thiophenes, are also found on Earth in coal, crude oil and white truffles, and their presence could indicate the existence of early life on the Red Planet.

In a paper published in March, Prof Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University and Dr Jacob Heinz of the Technische Universität in Berlin proposed that a biological process, most likely involving bacteria billions of years ago, may have played a role in the organic compound’s presence in the Martian soil.

“If you find thiophenes on Earth, you’d think they’re biological, but on Mars, of course, the bar to prove that has to be quite a bit higher,” said lead researcher Schulze-Makuch. “We identified several biological pathways for thiophenes that seem more likely than chemical ones, but we still need proof.”

Further evidence on the nature of these organic compounds is hoped to come from the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer that will be fitted to the Rosalind Franklin rover, which is expected to launch in 2022.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected thiophenes on Mars. The question now is how they got there