No, NASA Did Not Find Any Evidence of Life on Mars

The search of evidence of life on Mars has been a complete bust, with no convincing evidence ever being found for it. The main building components of one-celled life are protein molecules. No protein molecule has ever been found on Mars. The building components of protein molecules are amino acids. A functional protein molecule requires a very special arrangement of hundreds of amino acids, as unlikely to occur by chance as hundreds of twigs in a forest accidentally forming into a functional, readable paragraph. No amino acids have ever been found on Mars. 

But this utter failure to find convincing evidence that life ever existed on Mars has not stopped glory-hungry scientists from trying to insinuate that they found something that could be a sign of life on Mars. An example of this is described in my July 2024 post "NASA's Groundless Boast About Finding a Potential Biosignature." We see in a NASA press release the unimpressive-looking rock below, called the Cheyava Falls rock, which has no visual signs of life. Someone trying to suggest something like life has named some tiny spot a "leopard spot," trying to suggest something biological. The maneuver is ridiculous. The spot circled and called a "leopard spot" looks nothing like a leopard spot, and could have been formed by any of 1001 lifeless processes. 

Credit: NASA

Today we had a NASA press conference trying to create the impression that some possible evidence for life has been found on Mars. At www.space.com today we read this about the press conference: 

"On Wednesday (Sept. 10), researchers presented a study that describes how Perseverance found intriguing minerals on the western edge of Jezero Crater, in the clay-rich, mudstone rocks of a valley called 'Neretva Vallis.'

'When we see features like this in sediment on Earth, these minerals are often the byproduct of microbial metabolisms that are consuming organic matter,' Joel Hurowitz, a planetary scientist at Stony Brook University in New York and lead author of the new study, said during a NASA press conference held on Wednesday."

But this means little. Minerals are not fossils of life. Later at www.space.com we read this: 

" 'I want to remind everyone that what we're describing here is a potential biosignature that is a characteristic element, molecule, substance or feature that might have a biological origin but requires more data or further study before reaching a conclusion about the presence or absence of life,' Lindsay Hayes, Senior Scientist for Mars Exploration in the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, said during the conference."

Today's press conference does not announce any new news. Nothing new has been discovered. The press conference was called to publicize a scientific paper about the Cheyava Falls rock and nearby rocks scanned in 2024. That paper has the dull title "Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars." We hear no mention of any amino acids being found. Trying to boost excitement about something that is very probably no indication of life, the paper states, "In summary, our analysis leads us to conclude that the Bright Angel formation contains textures, chemical and mineral characteristics, and organic signatures that warrant consideration as ‘potential biosignatures’, that is, 'a feature that is consistent with biological processes and that, when encountered, challenges the researcher to attribute it either to inanimate or to biological processes, compelling them to gather more data before reaching a conclusion as to the presence or absence of life.' " 

This boils down to: we found something a little funny, and it might have been produced by life, or it might not have been. That is not evidence for life. Similarly, if I find on a tree a very-old apple that looks kind of half gone, that might be evidence that a squirrel once existed to chew on the apple, or maybe it's no evidence there were ever any squirrels nearby, and maybe the apple is just half-rotted, or half-eaten by worms. But I might call that half-gone apple "a potential squirrel biosignature."

The paper "False biosignatures on Mars: anticipating ambiguity" alerted us about the type of groundless hype that would be happening, saying, "It is often acknowledged that the search for life on Mars might produce false positive results, particularly via the detection of objects, patterns or substances that resemble the products of life in some way but are not biogenic." It states this:

"What concerns us here is the risk of false positive errors in the detection of life, specifically those arising from the misinterpretation of abiotic geological and chemical features that are misleadingly life-like (rather than analytical false positives or spacecraft contamination). One reason for concern is that such errors have been frequent in the history of palaeobiology and astrobiology down to the present day."

An example of the errors the article refers to is when two NASA scientists convinced US President Bill Clinton to do a press conference announcing that life had been found on Mars, on the basis of the scientists' analysis of a meteorite believed to have come from Mars. The consensus now is that such scientists were guilty of glory-hounding pareidolia, and that they produced no real evidence that life existed on Mars. 

Another scientific paper states this:

"Astrobiology’s core notion of indirectness invites the danger of false positives, as many candidate biosignatures – such as methane, oxygen, or phosphine – can arise from purely abiotic [lifeless] processes....False positives mark Astrobiology's history: the Allan Hills 84001 meteorite (McKay et al., 1996), Viking's ambiguous life detection results (Levin & Straat, 1976), Mars methane variations (Webster et al., 2015), and the controversial phosphine detection on Venus (Greaves et al.,2020)."

In addition to the four cases of astrobiology false positives discussed above, there are three cases of "visitor to the solar system" astrobiology false positives mentioned in my post here, and also the K2-18b astrobiology false positive discussed here. Add the famous case of the false alarm about Martian canals (involving Percival Lowell), and the false alarm of the "face on Mars" which did not survive a more high-resolution photo of the same spot, and you have ten examples of astrobiology false positives or false alarms. 

We simply cannot trust any NASA officials or any Mars specialists talking about this topic, because they are examples of vested interests, people who have lots of "skin in the game" rather than impartial judges. NASA and its scientists are very much hoping that the government funds a sample return mission that will spend 10 billion dollars or more to return soil samples and rock samples that the Perseverance Mars rover has gathered up and dumped on Mars. The funding of such a mission is in jeopardy, and it is now said that it will probably never occur. So we can expect that NASA and its scientists will try to exaggerate findings on Mars, trying to make unconvincing evidence for life on Mars seem like more compelling evidence. The greater the hype, and the greater the groundless boasting of finding a "tantalizing potential biosignature," the more likely the 10 billion dollar funding will occur. 

The fact remains that the chance that life ever existed on Mars is extremely low, because of the failure of all Mars missions to ever detect any proteins or amino acids on Mars. It is impossible to overestimate how much the failure to find any amino acids on Mars is a "show-stopper" for all conjectures about "potential biosignatures" on Mars. The amount of functional information in even the simplest living cell is comparable to the amount of functional information in a set of hundreds of long, well-written useful paragraphs. Speculating about life arising on a Mars without amino acids is like speculating that accidental arrangements of twigs formed many long, functional and grammatical paragraphs at some place (like the North Pole) where there are no twigs. 

The press coverage of today's NASA conference is full of the usual clickbait deceptions that litter the coverage of science in today's mainstream press. A shameless example is a CNN headline saying, "Rock discovery contains ‘clearest sign’ yet of ancient life on Mars, NASA says." The actual quote from the head of NASA is this: "So this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting.” The headlines are dropping out the "could be" qualifier. There is no compelling reason to think the evidence discussed is an actual sign of life. The "qualified superlative" trick by the NASA administrator is the kind of misleading language someone might use when saying, "This photo could well be the best evidence ever found that fairies live in the clouds." 

Postscript: An article at www.space.com says this: "But ancient Red Planet microbes aren't the only explanation for the vivianite and greigite; they can also form via geological processes, Perseverance team members stressed."

In cases such as this, our clickbait-hungry online press follows a rule of  "Give us an inch, and we'll take a mile." The website The Debrief has a false headline saying, "NASA Says Perseverance Rover Found Biosignatures Most Likely From Ancient Microbes." No one at NASA said that. The hedging statement from the NASA head was "this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found" which is not a statement claiming any likelihood that life was found. The article says the lead author of the paper stated, "But just because we saw all these compelling chemical signatures in the data didn’t mean we had a potential biosignature." So The Debrief has taken a "maybe a maybe" and represented it as a likelihood. 

Even worse is a shameless headline on the Futurism site, making a fictional claim there was a discovery of life on Mars: "Now That NASA Found Signs of Life on Mars, It's Clear Trump Made a Massive Error."  I must emphasize: no solid evidence has been found that life ever existed on Mars, and the lack of any discovery of amino acids on Mars is a very strong reason for thinking that life never existed on Mars.  The Futurism site article reminds us what is driving the announcement: besides scientists seeking glory, it is mainly about NASA trying to get people interested in funding a 10 billion dollar Mars sample return mission. 

When the site Phys.org has an untrue headline of "Mars Perseverance rover data suggests presence of past microbial life," we should analyze what is going on. Despite the site title suggesting some official physics organization, both the Phys.org site and the MedicalXPress sites are sites part of a "Science X" network owned by the for-profit publisher Omicron Limited, a company that stays afloat by having quite a few misleading or hyped clickbait headlines on its sites, interesting-sounding headlines that attract readers and generate advertising revenue. The more sensational the headlines, the more money the company makes from ads. In this case the article claims to be based on materials provided by Texas A&M University; but when I track down the press release issued by that university, I find a press release  much more hedging, something merely mentioning "potential biosignatures," and never claiming any likelihood of life.  

Even phonier is the bogus clickbait headline on the notoriously untrustworthy clickbait site Earth.com, a bogus headline of "NASA announces discovery of life on Mars with high degree of confidence." No one at NASA said anything about a high degree of confidence. In the body of the story we get the reality, with the quote of a scientist saying, "We cannot claim this is more than a potential biosignature." 

Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile

Ethan Siegel here has a good explanation of why merely finding organic molecules on Mars does nothing to show that life ever existed there. He says that using a 7-level "Confidence of Life Detection" scale, the evidence discussed in the recent Mars press conference merely reaches Level 1 (the lowest level). 

The NASA official statement here merely refers to a "potential biosignature," not a likely biosignature. We have a misleading statement by NASA chief Sean Duffy who says, "this finding... is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars." If you have not found any good reason for thinking something exists, it is misleading to talk about "the closest we have ever come to discovering" that thing. For example, if John has never seen a ghost but merely seen mist, it is misleading for him to claim his mist observations are "the closest I have come to discovering ghosts."

Entitled "Enceladus, The Life Signs That Weren't," a recent article at the Universe Today site discusses another astrobiology false alarm, one I did not mention above:

Post-postscript: Forbes now has an article entitled "NASA’s Mars Biosignature Claims Are Best Explained Without Invoking Life." We read this:

"NASA's news that its Perseverance Rover found potential biosignatures in rocks at Mars’ Jezero Crater is somewhat down for the count as the findings are now being challenged by leading geoastronomer Stephen Mojzsis. Mojzsis may be best known for throwing cold water on NASA’s 1996 announcement detailing putative evidence that the 'Allan Hills' Mars meteorite contained evidence of ancient microfossils.

Mojzsis, currently at the University of Bayreuth’s Bavarian Geoinstitute in Germany, is now disputing the Perseverance Rover’s 'potential biosignature' hypothesis which was published only a couple of weeks ago in the journal Nature.

There is nothing about this chemistry that cannot be explained by reactions that can happen in the absence of life, Mojzsis told me via email. The documented organic matter, phosphate minerals and proto-sulfide minerals are all found in meteorites, Mojzsis, who was not one of the Nature paper’s referees, told me."