Scientists develop new technique to detect alien life on Mars

Even as debate over life on Mars continues, scientists have now come up with a new technique to find traces of alien life on the Red Planet.

Scientists develop new technique to detect alien life on Mars

Washington: Even as debate over life on Mars continues, scientists have now come up with a new technique to find traces of alien life on the Red Planet.

Unmanned probes to Mars by NASA and European Space Agency have revealed that water, a prime condition for life, exists on the Red Planet.

“There has been a tremendous amount of very exciting findings this year that Mars once contained actively flowing, low-saline, near-neutral-pH water - pretty much the type of water where you find life on Earth today,” said Alison Olcott Marshall, assistant professor of geology at the University of Kansas.

Marshall is working with her colleague, Craig Marshall, associate professor of geology at KU, to improve the way scientists detect condensed aromatic carbon, thought to be a chemical signature of astrobiology.

“If we're going to identify life on Mars, it will likely be the fossil remnants of the chemicals once synthesised by life, and we hope our research helps strengthen the ability to evaluate the evidence collected on Mars,” Craig said.

If traces of ancient biology are detected in Mars, the KU researchers want to make sure the evidence is more conclusive.

According to a recent paper in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, by itself Raman spectroscopy is able to screen for carbonaceous material, but it can't determine its source - thus the technology needs to be supplemented in order to determine if life exists on Mars.

“Raman spectroscopy works by impinging a laser on a sample so the molecules within that sample vibrate at diagnostic frequencies,” Craig said.

Researchers advise the use of gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy to supplement Raman spectroscopy and develop more conclusive evidence of ancient extraterrestrial life.

(With PTI Inputs)

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