Sulfur Isotopic Difference Might Prove Life on Mars

Although space quests and inter-planetary explorations have failed and returned with no reports of signs of life other than here on earth, scientists have discovered some evidences that could lead to answers in the quest of extraterrestrial beings on other planets specifically Mars. Not one mission to Mars yielded confirmation of complex carbon-based molecules, of which life here on earth is founded and built. But interestingly, the surface of the Red Planet contains lots of sulfur, more than here on earth, key elements that might contain clues and signatures of primitive life forms that dwelled above the surface some millions of years ago.

John Parnell of the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom, and his team of planetary scientists found sulfides, allegedly formed through microbial activity, permeating the rocks of Haughton crater in the Canadian Arctic. A close scientific scrutiny of the crater's rocks confirms that the sulfides were produced at temperatures above 70 °C. These findings suggest that they formed shortly by microbes after the crater itself was created by a meteorite impact approximately 39 million years ago, when warm water from the impact would have seeped through the veins of the crater rocks.

Parnell pressed the case for investigating vast amounts of sulfur isotopes on Mars at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas. His claim is backed up by the fact that through million of years, the signature of life at Haughton crater remains clear, with sulphur-34 dispersed by 7 per cent in the sulfides compared with the sulfates that indicate microbial activity. This suggests that such a signature of lower life forms is not easily purged by environmental weathering and solidifies the chances that Martian rocks that were wet enough to support life long ago could still carry a faint but discernible evidences of life.