Shane Bergin

Maybe, right?

If we discover that life once existed or exists on an alien world, perhaps it'll be the most profound scientific discovery ever.

And it seems that we're kind of inching towards this discovery, which is really frustrating from a science communication point of view, but perhaps shows how science really works, which is gradual.

And what's happened here is that the Curiosity rover, the car-shaped rover,

little truck that's trundling along the surface of Mars, has discovered five molecules in a dry lake bed.

And it's thought that they are three and a half billion years old, which is remarkable that they have survived this long.

And they are what's called an organic molecule.

So it's a complex molecule that has a lot of carbon in it.

And what they're trying to figure out now is how did it get there?

And might this be the kind of the blueprint or the fingerprint of life that may have once existed on Mars?

It can get us so close to an answer, but because curiosity is

kind of only packed with so many scientific instruments, it's not able to tell if these molecules came from a geological process, which is possible, or they came from a meteorite that would have hit Mars.

And it's thought that, you know, in that time that meteorites with organic complex molecules would have been bombarding the Earth and Mars and other places.

So we don't know whether it's sort of a precursor or a remnant of something that was once alive or whether it is just from outer space.

It's really cool.

It's doable.

Yeah, now they did find a particular molecule, a biomolecule called benzothiophene, which is sulfur containing, and it's known that they tend to come from meteors.

But they also found a nitrogen-bearing organic molecule that has a structure that's very similar to DNA.

Yes, but what they're saying here crucially is these are the bricks.

This does not indicate that they ever got to build a house.