Kind: captions
Language: en
it was very exciting to photograph
biological material that is 253 million
years old and was still trapped in the
salt these are clearly the
oldest direct evidence of life on the
planet the team's find might even shed
light on another ancient world but this
one is millions of miles away if the
cellulose survived a quarter of a
billion years here on Earth is it quite
possible that it would survive that long
on the surface of
Mars cellulose might be the ideal paper
trail for the search for life on other
planets when we think of alien life this
scene may come to
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mind a close encounter of the Third
Kind but in reality alien life may be a
lot more basic as basic as
salt that's what Phil Christensen
professor of planetary geology at the
University of Arizona is hoping for the
top Phil developed the Imaging system
for the Mars aicy mission it works a lot
like a camera but records a thermal
signature instead of light so what we're
measuring is the amount of energy that
you're giving off and so my nose then is
hot or cold
that would be
correct millions of miles away on the
Martian surface this camera can
distinguish one mineral from another
based on its thermal signature that in
Phil's images each mineral is assigned a
different color salt is blue you can see
on Mars some of the classic salt cracks
and salt pan deposits that you see in
salt formations on the earth I believe
that if Mars ever had life we will find
evidence here so when Jack's results
came along saying you can actually
preserve cellulose in salt in our minds
that made this these types of deposits
vastly more interesting and what do you
think we're going to find in there I'll
be ecstatic if we go and find even the
building blocks of life the organic
compounds but if we found cellulose then
wow Mars had
life on other planets are probably
aren't Little Green Men but there may be
cellulos and that may be as close as
we'll get to proving that there is life
out there it may not be the kind of
close encounter we've seen in the
movies but something that's a lot more
tangible one of Nature's sturdiest
little molecules buried in crystals of
salt it's tasty
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