Oct 14, 2022 20:00:00

The first life born on Mars may have become extinct due to climate change caused by itself

Mars , the fourth planet from the Sun in the solar system, currently has no water on its surface, but it is believed to have been a watery planet in ancient times. On ancient Mars, where water was essential for the birth of life, researchers newly present the possibility that the first life that was born caused climate change, which made the Martian environment so cold that life could not survive. Did.

Early Mars habitability and global cooling by H2-based methanogens | Nature Astronomy
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01786-w

First Martian life likely broke the planet with climate change, made themselves extinct | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/mars-microbes-made-themselves-extinct-climate-change

Ancient Mars microbes may have made their planet unlivable through climate change | Space
https://www.space.com/mars-microbes-triggered-climate-chance-extinction

On October 10, 2022, the journal Nature Astronomy published a paper titled ``Early Mars habitability and planet-wide cooling was driven by hydrogen-based methanogenic microorganisms.'' rice field. According to this paper, the atmosphere of Mars about 3.7 billion years ago was similar to that of the Earth at the same time, but the first life born on Mars, ``microbes that consume hydrogen and produce methane,'' It is said that it has changed to an environment where living things do not exist as it is now because it has cooled so much that living things cannot survive.

The research team created a model to simulate 'microorganisms that consume hydrogen and produce methane'. As a result, we speculate that the reason why Earth became a planet brimming with life and Mars became lifeless is due to the difference in gas composition between Earth and Mars and their relative distance from the Sun.

Due to its greater relative distance from the Sun than Earth, Mars relies heavily on a layer of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen. However, ``hydrogen-consuming and methane-producing microorganisms'' consume ``hydrogen'', a powerful greenhouse gas, and produce ``methane,'' a weaker greenhouse gas than hydrogen. As a result, Mars slowly became unable to trap heat in the atmosphere, and eventually Mars turned into a very cold ``planet unsuitable for the evolution of complex life''.

According to simulations, when the surface temperature of Mars dropped from 14 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 to 20 degrees Celsius) to -70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 57 degrees Celsius), microbes began to flee deeper into the warmer crust. He said. After that, as the cooling phenomenon progressed, it seems that the microorganisms have penetrated to a depth of 1 km or more underground in just a few hundred million years.

The research team is investigating traces of microorganisms to prove this inference to be correct. Traces of microorganisms themselves have not been found at the time of writing the article, but in 2021, NASA's Mars exploration rover,

Curiosity , has detected a sharp rise in methane gas, and it is said that this is an `` alien burp ''. became. So it's possible that methane-producing microbes are still alive on Mars.

``The building blocks of life are everywhere in the universe. It is quite possible that they will appear regularly in space, but life will soon become extinct because it is difficult to maintain habitable conditions on the planet's surface. 's research shows that even very primitive organisms can have a self-destructive effect on the environment.'