By 
June 19th, 2021
Credits: NASA/Greg Shirah
The chances that life took hold on Mars are at least as high as they were on Earth.
A new research paper notes: “Although the habitability of early Mars is now well established, its suitability for conditions favorable to an independent origin of life has been less certain. With continued exploration, evidence has mounted for a widespread diversity of physical and chemical conditions on Mars that mimic those variously hypothesized as settings in which life first arose on Earth.”
Credit: Clark, Kolb, et al.
Early wet Mars remains a prime candidate for its own origin of life, in many respects superior to Earth, the paper explains.
The research paper – “Origin of Life on Mars: Suitability and Opportunities” — is led by Benton Clark and Vera Kolb and appears in the journal Life.
Go to this open access article — Origin of Life on Mars: Suitability and Opportunities – in Life, an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal of scientific studies related to fundamental themes in life sciences at:
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/11/6/539/htm
Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a professor at the Technical University Berlin, Germany, and an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University and Washington State University reviews the new paper in Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine.
There remains the real possibility that life started first on Mars, and was brought here by meteorites later, adds Schulze-Makuch at:
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