NASA's rover discovered signs of life on Mars, sparking debates among scientists about the implications and validity of these findings.

Last summer, NASA's Perseverance rover made a significant discovery on Mars by detecting carbon-based molecules known as organic molecules. Scientists concluded that this suggests the potential existence of life on the Red Planet in the past, and possibly even now. This finding has sparked ongoing debates among scientists. The issue is that researchers cannot be 100% certain that the rover found organic molecules, as reported by Space.

The Perseverance rover detected organic molecules in the Jezero crater using the SHERLOC instrument. According to Ken Farley from NASA, this device can identify organic molecules through ultraviolet fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy.

Fluorescence is the process by which a substance emits light as a result of absorbing energy without a rise in temperature. Farley noted that many substances can fluoresce, not just organic molecules. Raman spectroscopy is a method used by chemists to measure molecular bond vibrations to obtain information about a molecule's chemical structure. Farley believes that using both methods to detect organic molecules carries the risk of false positive results.

Research indicates that billions of years ago, Jezero crater on Mars contained a lake of liquid water, suggesting that microbial life could have existed there. The authors of a study based on this data, published last year, reported that NASA's rover found a variety of aromatic molecules on the Martian surface that have persisted despite harsh conditions.

A recent study has proposed an alternative explanation for this discovery. Scientists suggested that the signals indicating organic molecules might originate from inorganic substances, particularly cesium ions in phosphate and silicate defects from ancient magma flows.

According to Eva Schiller from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-authored the two aforementioned studies, several chemicals can exhibit the same features. Therefore, accurately interpreting the data obtained by the rover is very challenging.

Aromatic molecules are significant because they can be found in biological compounds such as amino acids and pigments. However, while the detection of such molecules is intriguing, it does not guarantee a biological origin, Schiller states.

On Earth, such ambiguous results can be clarified through careful analysis, but this is very difficult for NASA's rover to achieve. Thus, scientists believe that only bringing rock samples taken from Jezero crater back to Earth can clarify what Perseverance actually discovered.

However, both Farley and Schiller assert that even if organic molecules are present on Mars, it does not necessarily mean they are indicative of life. Such molecules can also be produced through non-biological processes.

Therefore, the question remains open: did life ever exist on Mars? The search continues.