Today, June 7th, 2018, NASA announced that Curiosity has found kerogen(2) in ...

Today, June 7th, 2018, NASA announced that Curiosity has found kerogen(2) in the Martian regolith at the base of Aeolis Mons in the Gale Crater.

Paul Voosen of Science did an excellent write up(1):

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/nasa-rover-hits-organic-pay-dirt-mars

Led by geochemist Jennifer Eigenbrode at Goddard Space Center, this discovery is deeply important on several different levels:

First, the engineering badass-ness that it took pull off this experiment. Remember that the drilling arm for curiosity failed back in December 2016. Without a working drill, NASA decided to have Curiosity continue to climb up Aeolis Mons. But then five months later, engineers figured out a new way to get Curiosity to use its *drill*(3).

So with the drill back in action, for the first time Curiosity was commanded to go *backwards* back down to the *mudstones*(4) to take some drill samples.

Second, the solid detection of *kerogens* is not direct proof for life on Mars, but it is by far the biggest indicator to date. Kerogens are essentially the messy thick soup that is the precursor to the petrochemicals and natural gas that supply the bulk of our energy economy.

90% of the Kerogens on Earth are the remnents of Algae(5) and other small creatures and biomass that is compressed and heated over geological times. These kerogens have been dated to be in 3 billion year old rock, back when Mars had a much thinker atmosphere and flowing water on the surface. So is this proof that there was life on Mars 3 billion years ago? No, it is not proof to a scientific rigor, but to me it is the most sensible hypothesis.

If this Martian kerogen did not come from 3 billion-year old Martian life, then what else could it be? Well it turns out that the solar system has thousands of Carbonaceous Chondrite(6) asteroids that from time to time break up into smaller bits and end up falling on Mars (and all the other planets as well). Kerogens are also found deep in space in the intersteller medium and has been detected around stars.

It is also possible that the original carbon-rich material from the early days of Mars formation and early bombardment phase was turned into this kerogen through volcanic processes.

In short, this kerogen stuff is everywhere and given the approx 250 billion stars in the galaxy and the approx 10 planets a star, it seems very likely that across those 2.5 trillion planets just in our galaxy life has arisen multiple times. Now, if we discover life on Mars (present or past), while that does not deliver scientific proof of life elsewhere in the galaxy, it again makes it the most sensible hypothesis that there is life across the galaxy.

(And then the mind just blows up thinking about the approximately trillion other galaxies in the universe).

1. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/nasa-rover-hits-organic-pay-dirt-mars

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerogen

3. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2017/0906-curiosity-balky-drill-problem.html

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudstone

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonaceous_chondrite

Originally posted on Facebook on June 07, 2018.