{"id":8910,"date":"2025-09-11T06:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T06:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/8910\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T06:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T06:13:07","slug":"speckled-rocks-clearest-sign-yet-of-ancient-life-on-mars-nasa-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/8910\/","title":{"rendered":"Speckled rocks \u2018clearest sign\u2019 yet of ancient life on Mars, Nasa says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Colorful, speckled rocks found on the surface of Mars have offered among the most encouraging evidence yet of ancient life on our neighbouring planet, scientists at Nasa announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The Perseverance Mars rover collected the \u201cSapphire Canyon\u201d rock samples in July 2024 from what\u2019s thought to be an ancient lake bed, and its poppyseed and leopard-esque spots pointed to potential chemical reactions that piqued the interest of researchers.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">If the features resulted from microbial activity that created minerals in the way they do on Earth &#8211; well, that might point to life on Mars.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">It was far too soon for scientists to say that definitively, but the findings, which were detailed in research published in the journal Nature, were alluring.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Martian rock with features resembling leopard spots. Photo: Nasa\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS via Reuters\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/295d5c7d-d1e3-41de-ad56-aba5bb9b5c03_f108709e.jpg\" title=\"Martian rock with features resembling leopard spots. Photo: Nasa\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS via Reuters\"\/>Martian rock with features resembling leopard spots. Photo: Nasa\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS via Reuters<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cWe put it out to our scientific friends to pressure test it, to analyse it, and go, did we get this right? Do we think this is signs of ancient life on Mars?\u201d Nasa\u2019s acting administrator Sean Duffy said at a news conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colorful, speckled rocks found on the surface of Mars have offered among the most encouraging evidence yet of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[9945,1744,85,46,9125,2758,9949,3442,9950,9946,9947,141,5690,9948,9951],"class_list":["post-8910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ancient-life","tag-earth","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-joel-hurowitz","tag-mars","tag-mars-sample-return-programme","tag-nasa","tag-nicky-fox","tag-perseverance","tag-sapphire-canyon","tag-science","tag-sean-duffy","tag-signs-of-life","tag-vivianite-and-greigite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}