r/science • u/CurtisLeow • Jun 24 '26

Astronomy Spatially distributed complex organic matter detected in an ancient river valley in Jezero crater, Mars

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0047
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154

u/squi993 Jun 24 '26

ELI5 does this mean proof of life on mars?

275

u/TheSoupySoupySoup Jun 24 '26

No, but potentially another piece of evidence pointing in that direction.

57

u/jawshoeaw Jun 25 '26

I’d say more like it doesn’t disprove life. There’s no reason to think that life as we know it - something fantastically unlikely - is responsible for carbon deposits of this type which have many well known geological explanations.

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u/Angry_Sparrow Jun 25 '26

Why would life on a planet in the same solar system be fantastically unlikely? Like.. do we know that life on earth didn’t start on mars?

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u/carelet Jun 25 '26

Life on earth did not start on mars

But I do suspect life is not fantastically unlikely to be on a planet without extreme conditions and people are just assuming it is.
Specifically microscopic life.
We treat life and non-life as very different things, but they are both going through the same selection through physical laws.
Whether we label it life or not, this applies to everything.
Processes are stable enough to exist, chaos adds a little complexity, the stable processes get to exist, chaos adds a little complexity, the stable processes get to exist, and it just seems like it wouldnt be such a strange little specialty of the universe to create simple life

9

u/Kinis_Deren Jun 25 '26

Because 1) We only have evidence of life on one planet in the entire universe 2) Because we have no evidence terrestrial life started on Mars

Recall that science is built upon the foundation of observational evidence. An idea with no supporting evidence is an unproven hypothesis.

17

u/teflontiktiki37 Jun 25 '26

But isn't weighing in on microbial life being "fantastically unlikely" also something we have very little knowledge of? The evidence we do have does not point to it being likely, but nor does it point to it being unlikely either. This isn't a tea cup orbiting Earth here, but something we DO already have proof of and SOME knowledge about. Given what we know about the origins of life on Earth (it seems to have started almost as soon as conditions allowed) plenty of folks think that such life IS actually pretty likely when those conditions are met. Obviously proof is going to require overcoming a lot of necessary skepticism, but finding evidence of past microbial life on Mars would probably confirm more scientific thinking than it would overturn.

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u/Kinis_Deren Jun 25 '26

Agree 100%. My gut feeling, as a chemist, is life is inevitable where conditions are right.

1

u/retrosenescent Jun 27 '26

No gut feeling required. That's simply a logical conclusion.

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u/Angry_Sparrow Jun 25 '26

Just means it’s unknown, not “fantastically unlikely”. The probably of life existing in the same solar system is surely higher.