Are their fossils on mars?

[sta895]

NASA sent perseverance to mars in a supposedly dried up lake to find fossils. Although they are not expecting to find large dinosaur bones that we have on earth, they are looking for any evidence of microbe life. although the question are their fossils on mars is still unanswered, we should keep our hopes up on finding past life on another planet.

[Airbrush]

My question is how do you DETECT a fossil microbe on Mars?  They would be microscopic.  Is there a microscope on Perseverance?

Edited July 21, 2021 by Airbrush

[TheVat]

Are their fossils on mars?

Are whose fossils on Mars?   

😀

[Area54]

The search for evidence of life by Perseverance falls into two categories:

• From sedimentological studies identify environments that could have been habitable.
• For these instances:
  • Use the onboard analytical equipment to search for biosignatures.
  • Look for possible fossils - I have not yet tracked down the specs on the Perseverance camera system, but supecte detection would be imited to macrofossils.
  • Cache promising samples for eventual return to Earth for comprehensive laboratory analysis

Edit: Full camera specs in this paper. The relevant camera for this discussion is the Cachecam: "The Cachecam, a new camera type, will acquire images of Martian material inside the sampletubes during caching operations at a spatial scale of 12.5 microns/pixel."

Edited July 21, 2021 by Area54
Provide link

[storyteller]

Any life on Mars would be micro-scales, and mostly likely under the Bacteria.

You definitely won't find animals or plants in Mars' condition. Neither would survive without water and with average temperature of -60 deg C.

If there were water like rivers, lakes or seas, is still debatable.

Although the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, and there are sunlight, photosynthesis won't occur without water, so it would be pointless to plant vegetation on Mars, and expect to thrive. Photosynthesis needs ultraviolet rays, water and carbon dioxide, for plants to cause chemical convert to carbohydrates, the energy needed for plants to sustain life.

 

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, storyteller said:

If there were water like rivers, lakes or seas, is still debatable.

 

I thought that question was settled.

Quote

Research published in June 2010 mapped 40,000 river valleys on Mars, roughly quadrupling the number of river valleys that had previously been identified.^[31] Martian water-worn features can be classified into two distinct classes: 1) dendritic (branched), terrestrial-scale, widely distributed, Noachian-age valley networksand 2) exceptionally large, long, single-thread, isolated, Hesperian-age outflow channels.

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

[beecee]

Not sure of anything along the lines of further confirmation, or not, But the finding of a meteorite in the Antarctic, thought to have originated on Mars, and called ALH84001, has been found to contain microscopic bacteria, thereby suggesting that they originated on Mars It is not the first Martian rock to be found on Earth, which further suggests the possibility of Earth rocks on Mars. And Earth rocks with similar Earth based microscopic bacteria on Mars.

Edited August 3, 2021 by beecee

[storyteller]

3 hours ago, zapatos said:

 

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

Thanks, zapatos 

[Country Boy]

On 7/21/2021 at 5:00 PM, TheVat said:

Are their fossils on mars?

Are whose fossils on Mars?   

😀

I thought that but didn't post it!😄