Decades After Landing on Mars, We May Find Proof of Past Life
After 25 years of rovers landing on Mars, many are looking forward to the next chapter of Mars exploration, which may include excavating deep into the red planet. In July 1997, NASA’s Pathfinder landed on Mars and began its mission to demonstrate how a robotic rover would land on the red planet.
Using an innovative design, the rover landed on Mars with a parachute and a series of giant airbags to cushion its blow. The Carl Sagan memorial station and the Sojourner Rover outlived their projected lifespan, and in the years following sent magnificent images back to Earth.
The lander returned more than 16,500 images and the rover sent back 550 more, in addition to chemical analyses of rocks, soil, and data on wind and weather. The final transmission from the Mars Pathfinder was on September 27, 1997, but the data it provided helped scientists to conclude Mars was once wet and warm, and rounded rocks on the surface indicate they may have been worn down by running water, and if there was water, there could have been life.
Flash forward to today, NASA’s Perseverance Rover, on the red planet since February of 2021, is tasked with finding past or present life and seeing if humans could one day explore or colonize Mars.
Perseverance is collecting samples to determine if they contain any fossils of ancient Martians. But a new study led by Alexander Pavlov, a space scientist at NASA, says they might have to dig a lot deeper.
Pavlov argues that amino acids could be the best evidence of any past life on Mars, but after millions of years of radiation, all those amino acids on the surface would have been destroyed, writing, “Our experimental results suggest serious challenges for the search of ancient amino acids and other potential organic biosignatures in the top 2m of the Martian surface.” Two meters, or roughly seven feet, may not sound like much, but Perseverance can only dig a few inches.
“Microcraters are common on Mars,” Pavlov told Vice. “Small impactors can excavate rocks from several meters of depth. Cosmic rays are significantly reduced by two-meter depth into a rock and do not penetrate at all below four meters. Therefore, an ejecta from such depths would have a small exposure time to cosmic rays and thus, may contain the primordial unaltered amino acids from billions of years ago.”
In 25 years of humans studying the surface of Mars we have learned so much, but as Pavlov concluded in his study, “We have only scratched the surface of this problem.”
With every problem comes the opportunity to figure out a solution and perhaps this will help us find life on Mars.
Have Recent Solar Flares Opened Energy Portals?
On October 28, 2021, a massive solar flare unleashed a blast of charged particles in Earth’s direction.
This geomagnetic storm resulted in a display of stunning auroras thanks to our planet’s protective magnetosphere. But did this powerful solar event also open temporary energetic portals?
On Oct. 28, a Category 3 geomagnetic storm erupted from the Sun’s surface reaching earth a few days later. This classification comes from the national oceanic and atmospheric administration’s space weather scale.
A level 3 geomagnetic storm is considered strong and can result in minor disturbances to high-frequency radio signals and low-frequency radio navigation. It also leads to auroras visible at much lower latitudes than usual, including as far south as Oregon and even Illinois.
Matias De Stefano, host of the Gaia series Initiation, happened to be in Oregon during this profound solar event.
These storms from the magnetic field of the Sun affect all the planets around, and of course when they hit Earth, they change the pattern of the magnetic field of the planet,” De Stefano said. “So, that opens portals all the time because it moves the energy of the planet and makes the geometrical patterns have to restore and readapt to something new.”
In 2012, NASA published a paper titled, “Hidden Portals in Earth’s Magnetic Field,” in which it explained that a scientist had discovered what the space agency refers to as x-points, or portals where the magnetic field of the Earth connects to the Sun.
According to Jack Scudder, the lead physicist who discovered these portals, this phenomenon creates an uninterrupted connection to the Sun‘s atmosphere 93 million miles away. But what effect does this have for us here on Earth?
