Copenhagen, Denmark

For nearly 12 years, NASA's Curiosity rover has been actively collecting samples from the surface of Mars and continuously making groundbreaking discoveries. The recent findings related to the properties of the organic material present on the red planet have challenged the existing knowledge of scientists on both Mars and Earth.

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The material discovered has properties that are generally a sign of microorganisms on Earth. However, they can also be due to non-biological, chemical functions. The findings published in Nature Geoscience have baffled researchers from where it came into being.

According to researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, who are collaborating on this research, this discovery can help understand how life came into being billions of years ago on our planet Earth.

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Co-author of the study, Matthew Johnson of the University of Copenhagen calls this discovery "the smoking gun", which confirms a decade-old theory of so-called photolysis in the atmosphere of Mars.

"Such carbon-based complex molecules are the prerequisite of life, the building blocks of life, one might say," he said. "So, this is a bit like the old debate about which came first, the chicken or the egg. We show that the organic material found on Mars has been formed through atmospheric photochemical reactions – without life that is. This is the 'egg', a prerequisite of life. It still remains to be shown whether or not this organic material resulted in life on the red planet."

The concept that photolysis, a process in which molecules are broken apart by light, plays a role in the organic chemistry of Mars has been going about for a long time. However, hard evidence to support the theory has not been found. 

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"The smoking gun here is that the ratio of carbon isotopes in it exactly matches our predictions in the quantum chemical simulations, but there was a missing piece in the puzzle. We were missing the other product of this chemical process to confirm the theory, and that's what we've now obtained," said Johnson.

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The discovery was made by the Curiosity rover in the Gale Crater including carbon-13 depletion in the samples of carbonate minerals, which mirrors the same elements found in a previous discovery from the Martian meteorite that formed the basis of the initial theory.

This strong piece of evidence gives us clues about the origins of organic material on Earth. Since Earth, Mars, and Venus have similar atmospheres, the same processes likely occurred on our planet.

"We have not yet found this 'smoking gun' material here on Earth to prove that the process took place. Perhaps because Earth's surface is much more alive, geologically and literally, and therefore constantly changing," said Johnson.

"But it is a big step that we have now found it on Mars, from a time when the two planets were very similar."

(With inputs from agencies)