Liked on YouTube: Curiosity Rover Found Potential Signs Of Life On Mars!

Curiosity Rover Found Potential Signs Of Life On Mars!
One of the most important goals of space exploration is the search for life outside the Earth. Could we have succeeded with Curiosity Rover finding traces of organic matter on Mars? Join us today as we talk about this in more detail! Organic Molecules found on Mars. ( Signs of Life On Mars) Subscribe for more videos:https://www.youtube.com/c/InsaneCuriosity?sub_confirmation=1? It wouldn’t take a genius to know that Mars has been a popular pick on sci-fi films. Who can forget Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall? Besides that, there’s also Matt Damon’s The Martian in 2015, John Carter in 2012, the Red Planet in 2000, and the most recent one, 2019’s Ad Astra. If you’re an avid viewer of these types of film, I’m sure you may have wondered if these scenarios are possible at some point. If you are a long time fan of this channel, you know how much we love to talk about Mars! And who wouldn’t? I mean, this planet is practically our Earth’s sister, and if there’s anything that we can say that is the best candidate in our Solar System to HOPEFULLY host our species in the future, it would certainly be the Red Planet. To recall, Mars is practically similar to Earth in various numbers of ways. We both have an atmosphere, although in terms of composition, they are practically different. Our rotational speeds are practically the same, it’s just that Mars moves 2.7% slower. So with all that’s been going on with Mars, what could probably be the most exciting news we would hear about it? New craters? Finding a sufficient atmosphere? Well, how about finding something that would indicate the possibility of life existing at some point? Does that do anything for ‘ya? I’m sure it does! The news of finding evidence of life possibility of Mars isn’t entirely something new. In 1996, the then US President Bill Clinton presented to the press a sample from Antarctica discovered by Alan Hills in 1984. The rock named ALH84001 debris was suspected to have ejected from Mars, and what’s special about it was that it contained traces of fossils of what appear to be microbes! Sadly, at that conference, the press wasn’t interested and Clinton was asked a more trivial question such as where did he get his tie. Plebs, am I right? For instance, in 2012, the Curiosity rover landed on Mars with a specific goal in mind -- or it’s programming rather. The rover landed on the Gale Crater, a land depression spanning about 154 kilometers in diameter. One of the core functions of the Curiosity rover is to be able to dig at a certain depth and effectively take a few samples. Through the help of the rover’s very own analysis suite called SAM, or Sample Analysis at Mars, the samples were heated up 500 degrees Celsius, so that the organic molecules will be released in the form of gas. Sounds like an easy task, doesn’t it? Not entirely. Some large organic molecules are not that easy to vaporize due to the presence of sulfur, and when the presence of this element makes it much harder to heat up. However, despite the challenge, the rover still managed to isolate organic molecules from the mudstone, which included benzene, toluene, small carbon chains such as propane and butane, and most importantly, the one that we’re gonna talk about more, thiophenes..and a few isotopes of it. So what exactly is it that makes thiophenes special? Before we dive more into that, let’s talk a bit about thiophenes here on Earth. Here, these compounds are commonly found on coals and oil crudes, and is most generally used for agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. Besides the previously mentioned, thiophenes can also be found in white truffles, which is a really expensive and familiar ingredient for those who love exquisite culinary experiences. Okay, does this mean that there are Martian mushrooms growing on the top of Gale Crater as we speak? Well, right around the time it was discovered, not entirely. But all hope is not lost! Part of the InSight Lander’s mission is to lower down a heat probe into the mudstones in Gale and attempt to discover whether the larger organic molecules where the thiophene may have came from. Moreover, at around the start of the second half of 2020, Russia’s Rosalind Franklin will bring the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or MOMA, for short to aid the investigation of the compounds. Besides that, a recent publication on the Astrobiology journal presented results that may increase the excitement on the search and verification of organic molecules on Mars. According to the paper, the correlations found in the analyses of the samples studies suggest that it might have been biological processes that resulted in the presence of the organic compounds found on the mudstones. However, it’s still not mushrooms that might have done it and they’re leaning towards inferring that it might have been a result of bacterial processes. #InsaneCuriosity #LifeOnMars #RecentSpaceDiscoveries
via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JipLvMHIfoQ