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NASA recently announced that its mercenary Curiosity on Mars had found complex organic molecules – the main raw materials we know for life. But now, it turns out that the previous NASA probe could have made the same discovery more than 40 years ago, but only accidentally burned it.
In 1976, NASA's Viking Twins conducted Marse's first experiments on organic material research. Researchers have long known that the entire planet is constantly bombarded by micrometers and high-carbon dust, so Mars should be covered with organic molecules. But Viking's research facilities found nothing, making them embarrbading researchers.
© NASA / JPL
"It was completely unexpected and at odds with what we knew," says Chris McKay NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
The idea that Marse was not an organic molecule was persecuted, the researchers made an explanation one after the other, but no one dared – until what happened. another probe appears.
Marshal Phoenix of NASA, near the North Pole of Mars, discovered strange salts, the so-called perchlorates, in 2008. On Earth, they are used for rocket fuel and fires. artifice, because they become explosive at high temperatures.
Mars is not a problem on the surface of the surface because there is a cold, but by looking for organic materials, Viking marshmallows have molded the soil samples of Mars to smell the molecules that there are contained. Perchlorates in the soil may have burned all the organic matter, hiding their presence.
After this discovery, McKay and his colleagues found the belief that the organic matter of Marse is really. "Suddenly, you get new ideas and realize that everything you've thought of is wrong," he says.
But the opinions of the scientific community were not unanimous. Some people said that there are organic substances on the surface of Mars, others were sure that they were sterile.
The latest discoveries of the "Curiosity" sent by the Marshal have provided researchers with the opportunity to detect these materials and finally dispel doubts about Marshal's precursor. More importantly, with complex organic molecules, Curiosity has also found chlorobenzene.
This molecule – in which six carbon atoms are formed in the form of a nest of bees and five other carbon atoms and a hydrogen in the corners are obtained when the carbon molecules burn in the perchlorates. So, these are indirect indications that Marsey has organic matter and that they could have been detected by the Vikings.
Having this in mind, Melissa Guzman of the LATMA Research Center in France, McKay and their colleagues began to delve into the Vikings' data and discovered that he had also discovered chlorobenzene, which would come from probably of burning organic matter.
Guzman treats it carefully and states that it is not 100% convinced that chlorobenzene was formed due to the burning of Martian organic matter, and not because of the "rabbits" of the Earth, but other researchers do not doubt it.
Daniel Glavin, a non-explorer of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, says that this component is so complex that it should have been formed from missing Mars molecules.
"This article is really going to end." He believes that the study will eventually convince people that the "Vikings" have not returned empty. According to Curiosity's findings, it appears that organic matter exists in more than one place on Mars – so maybe that really covers the planet.
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