{"id":147298,"date":"2022-09-30T15:25:29","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T20:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/detecting-proof-of-life-in-mars-samples-may-be-well-nigh-impossible"},"modified":"2022-09-30T15:25:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T20:25:29","slug":"detecting-proof-of-life-in-mars-samples-may-be-well-nigh-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/detecting-proof-of-life-in-mars-samples-may-be-well-nigh-impossible","title":{"rendered":"Detecting Proof Of Life In Mars Samples May Be Well-Nigh Impossible"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/detecting-proof-of-life-in-mars-samples-may-be-well-nigh-impossible.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Finding definitive evidence for past primitive life in ancient Mars rock and soil samples may be well-nigh impossible, renowned geologist and astrobiologist Frances Westall told me at the recent Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) in Granada, Spain. And she should know. Westall is someone who still claims the discovery of Earth\u2019s oldest-known microfossils, dating back some 3.45-billion-years ago.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s hard enough to identify primitive microfossils in Earth\u2019s oldest rocks, much less from robotic samples taken on Mars. Thus, if we have a hard time identifying past life on Earth, what hope do we have of doing it with Mars samples?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be really difficult,\u201d said Westall, a researcher at France\u2019s Center for Molecular Biophysics in Orleans. \u201cI can tell you, there\u2019s going to be a lot of arguments about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finding definitive evidence for past primitive life in ancient Mars rock and soil samples may be well-nigh impossible, renowned geologist and astrobiologist Frances Westall told me at the recent Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) in Granada, Spain. And she should know. Westall is someone who still claims the discovery of Earth\u2019s oldest-known microfossils, dating back some [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1490,6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-robotics-ai","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}