HN Reader

“After a year of review, they have come back and they said, listen, we can’t find another explanation,” said Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “So this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting.” [1]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/science/nasa-mars-sapphire-fa...

> Clearest sign' yet of ancient life on Mars

Is it more clear than the presence of artificial canals on the planet? Because at the time, the signs were quite clear as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canals

Related comics: https://www.badspacecomics.com/post/apostles-of-mercy

If we eventually find martian microbes, or at least their fossils, my bet is that we'll find them to be related to us.

Still seems fairly speculative to me. I think it's very likely that there was life given all the water but this is still a ways away from a smoking gun.

Just as a side note, this rock has been garnering lot of interest pretty much immediately as it was discovered a year ago. There were also few papers published this spring hinting at biological origin.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/26/science/nasa-perseverance...

https://earthsky.org/space/life-on-mars-leopard-spots-poppy-...

So if you feel like you heard this story before, then it's probably one of the previous times this rock made the rounds

What happened with the organic gases in the upper atmosphere of Venus? I would love it if we find that the life in the universe is ubiquitous. I'm inclined to believe that this should be the case anyway.

Kind of bad news for human kind if we find out the life also started in Mars. One Great Filter down.

I’ve read that NASA has chosen landing sites that specifically have evidence of ancient rather than more recent or even present day water, with the logic that they do not want to potentially contaminate a site with active martian life with earth based microbes.

Can anyone speak more towards this or identify some of these potential sites that harbor life on mars? Will we ever directly probe somewhere that likely harbors life?

Is this like a banded iron formation?