14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few years, more and more studies began hinting at the fact that the earliest life-forms to develop here on Earth came from Mars. Experts from two prestigious institutions in the United States have now developed an instrument to test this hypothesis.
Experts at the Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) propose the creation of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes (SETG) instrument as a means of knowing for sure whether science is on the right track.
In the early days of the solar system, Mars and Earth had very similar environments and conditions on their surfaces. Numerous meteorites, dislocated by powerful asteroid impacts from the Martian surface, made their way to Earth eventually.
What scientists are proposing is that some of these space rocks may have carried the seeds that led to the development of the earliest life-forms here. We may all be descendants of those microorganisms.
Discovering evidence of DNA or RNA on the Red Planet would provide the evidence needed to show that this line of thought is valid. The SETG instrument was designed to identify genetic material on our neighboring planet for this very purpose.
A summary of how the device would work was presented this month in Big Sky, Montana, at the latest IEEE Aerospace Conference. MIT postdoctoral associate Clarissa Lui made the presentation.
MIT research scientist Christopher Carr, the head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at the Institute, Maria Zuber, and Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard University molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun developed the operating principles.
The ultimate goal of studies conducted via SETG would be the discovery of particular sequences of DNA or RNA, that past investigations determined are nearly omnipresent in terrestrial life-forms.
According to the IEEE presentation, the instrument would work by collecting samples of Martian soil, and then searching from traces of microbes or other microorganisms within. If experts discover even fossilized evidence, they may still be able to recover viable DNA for analysis.
“It's a long shot, but if we go to Mars and find life that's related to us, we could have originated on Mars. Or if it started here, it could have been transferred to Mars,” Carr explains.
“We could be related to life on Mars. So we should at least be looking for life on Mars that's related to us,” the MIT expert concludes.