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On Earth, carbon and hydrogen are everywhere. In fact, 75% of your body (excluding water) is composed of these two elements. They are everything from our DNA to our cell walls. We call these chemicals "organic" – and life as we know it on Earth would not exist without them.
So in 1984 when scientists found a Martian meteorite in Antarctica crawling with organic chemicals, their discovery raised an interesting question: did organic chemicals come from life?
At first, scientists speculated that these chemicals could have been introduced into meteorite after impact. However, the chemical signatures of the organic matter did not focus on the surface of the rock, as one would expect if it had recovered them later. Instead, organic compounds became denser and more dense towards the center of the meteorite.
Nevertheless, scientists were skeptical about the possibility of finding organic chemicals on Mars. The surface of the planet without atmosphere is simply too hard to even support organic chemical structures, they speculated. However, more recently, Martian rovers like Curiosity have discovered clear traces of organic compounds on the surface of the planet. In 2012, Curiosity found chemicals similar to kerogen, a component of fossil fuel.
Life is an important source of organic compounds, but not the only one. Geological processes can also lead to the creation of organic compounds, Boston said. For example, volcanoes sometimes spit organic compounds in the atmosphere. Thus, although it is possible that chemicals are a sign of past life, it is still not certain.
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