A study about life beginning on Mars before arriving on Earth was announced at the Goldschmidt Meeting in Florence, Italy by Prof. Steven Benner of the Westheimer Institute of Science and Technology at Gainesville, Flo.
The theory explains that Mars had a better environment to begin life billions of years ago, the BBC reports. Scientists have long been trying to figure out how atoms came together for DNA, RNA and proteins, which make up the building blocks of living organisms.
DNA and RNA are thought to be too complex to have been created on Earth as it existed three billion years ago. Prof. Benner argues that minerals needed to shape RNA would have been plentiful on Mars.
According to USA Today, Space.com noted that since water is corrosive, much of the minerals needed to help form RNA would be lost in early Earth oceans. Earth lacked the elements boron and oxidized molybdenum, which are integral for the RNA process.
The study then posits that these building blocks for life arrived on Earth via meteorites, an idea not first come up with by Prof. Benner. It’s long been kicked around by scientists as a possibility for the beginning of life on Earth.
According to the BBC, Prof. Benner explained that the form of molybdenum minerals “couldn’t have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago, the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did.”
“The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock.”
image: Wikimedia Commons
