The Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has announced the discovery of organic compounds containing nitrogen in a Martian meteorite. This alien rock was ejected from Mars, most likely during a massive impact about 15 million years ago, and traveled to Earth, where it was picked up by researchers in Antarctica in 1984. 

This particular rock was already famous. Dubbed the Allan Hills Meteorite, or just “That Mars Meteorite”, this rock, ALH84001, was at the heart of 1996 claims that nanobacteria had been found in a Martian meteorite. These claims were based on the shape of mineral structures in the rock that resemble formations of extremophiles on Earth; however many researchers have tried to debunk these claims, both by explaining that what is being seen in scanning electron microscope images could be a mistake in sample preparation, and by finding other ways to create these sample shapes. 

This new research on the same rock doesn’t just look at the mineral shapes, and it makes no claims about finding lifeforms. Instead, it looks at the chemical composition of the rock. They have found orange-colored carbonate grains that are consistent with minerals forming in organic-rich water. This Orthopyroxene rock could have formed 4 billion years ago on Mars in an aquatic surrounding – the kind of surroundings where life could have either formed or thrived. After Mars dried out, this rock would have sat in an increasingly inhospitable landscape until an impact sent it on its interplanetary journey. 

The folks at the Earth-Life Science Institute were fully aware of the earlier controversy and wanted their own work to be above board. As described in the press release, to make sure they avoided contamination, “the team developed new techniques to prepare the samples with. For example, they used silver tape in an ELSI clean lab to pluck off the tiny carbonate grains, which are about the width of a human hair, from the host meteorite. The team then prepared these grains further to remove possible surface contaminants with a scanning electron microscope-focused ion beam instrument at JAXA. They also used a technique called Nitrogen K-edge micro X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (µ-XANES) spectroscopy, which allowed them to detect nitrogen present in very small amounts, and to determine what chemical form that nitrogen was in. Control samples from nearby igneous minerals gave no detectable nitrogen, showing the organic molecules were only in the carbonate.”

Now, the presence of nitrogen containing organic compounds doesn’t mean Mars had life. It means that Mars had conditions consistent with life as we know it here on Earth. What this rock means is that we need to develop the technology to go fossil hunting on Mars, because the odds are becoming ever more in our favor that we just might find something etched in Mars’ now-dead surface.

More:

4-billion-year-old nitrogen-containing organic molecules discovered in Martian Meteorites (ELSI)