#exolife

Curiosity, NASA's rover responsible for the new findings, took this self-portrait on Mars in 2015. Credit: NASA

    Big news from Mars today: NASA's Curiosity rover found ancient traces of organic matter embedded in Martian rocks and detected a "seasonal variation" in atmospheric methane on the Red Planet — an annual pulse of the gas, almost as if something out there were breathing.

These are exciting findings, published as twin papers in the journal Science today (June 7). But they aren't proof of life on Mars, or even necessarily strong evidence that there's anything living, or anything that used to be alive, out there. The organic compounds aren't even the first molecules of their kind found on Mars, though they are the oldest.

"We can explain both of these things with geological processes," said Inge Loes ten Kate, an astrobiologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who wrote a commentary for Science accompanying the two papers.

새해 첫 날 💞 Happy New Year! tough days and teary moments, 2017 has end yet the laughs and smiles in every Exo and Exo-Ls will always be in my memory~

leт'ѕ welcoмe 2018 eхo-lѕ! leт тнere вe a мυrderoυѕ wιnnιng agaιn!👑 leт'ѕ collecт loтѕ oғ awardѕ тнιѕ year 💕 and leт υѕ мaĸe eхo нappy