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  • 2 months ago
Scientists were amazed by a rock found at Cheyava Falls on Mars. This video details how the Perseverance rover analyzed the rock, finding evidence of chemical reactions and organic molecules that, on Earth, are often associated with life, justifying its classification as a 'potential biosignature'.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Transcript
00:00Our first reaction on the team when we saw this rock was like, whoa, what is that?
00:04What could have caused that?
00:07Sample 25 is called Sapphire Canyon.
00:10This is a core that was collected from the Cheyava Falls Rock in Nuretva Valis.
00:16The Cheyava Falls Rock is really neat.
00:19If you look at it, it's got all sorts of cool features.
00:21It has these small black spots that we call poppy seeds and also these larger spots that
00:28we call leopard spots.
00:30This is the only place we've found on Mars so far where we have chemical evidence that
00:35chemical reactions associated with life could have been happening, as well as organic molecules.
00:42The Sherlock instrument detected an organic signature, so both of those together in the
00:46same rock is really compelling because these similar types of features, when we find them
00:51on Earth, oftentimes they're associated with biology, with microbes, and so those pieces
00:56of evidence combined together, we believe justify calling it a potential biosignature.
01:02I would describe the Sapphire Canyon sample as mysterious because we see these signatures
01:09that tell us chemistry has happened, potentially involving organics, but what does that mean?
01:15Could life have been involved or something that didn't involve life at all?
01:19We're not going to know until we bring that sample back and do some more measurements.
01:26.

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