NASA's Curiosity rover, with its ChemCam, has discovered 3.8 billion-year-old borates.

BORATE dramatically increases the "life value" of ancient Mars Daily News, Science Network 5 news, said that NASA's Curiosity rover, found 3.8 billion years of borate on the Red Planet, because borate compounds are "the key to life", the discovery of Mars habitability greatly improved, but also gave scientists more important clues about whether life may exist on the Red Planet.
Curiosity rover was climbing Mount Mars with a laser camera called ChemCam, developed jointly by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the French space agency.
rover was given information about changes in Mars' ancient lakes and subterranean environment and, more importantly, "got" several important chemical evidences related to the composition of Martian rock, including the emergence of boron.
the 3.8 billion-year-old borate found on Mars, the presence of calcium sulfate mineral veins on Mars, also means that boron is present in the Martian groundwater, where it is warm and suitable for microbial survival.
Given the key role borate plays in the production of RNA, an important part of life, the discovery of boron on Mars further increases the likelihood of life on the planet.
researchers explain that borates are a key catalyst for RNA formation. The key component of
RNA is a sugar called rna, which is very unstable and breaks down quickly in water, so another element is needed to stabilize it - borate, which reacts with the RNA and stabilizes it long enough to prepare the RNA, providing the basis for the birth of organisms.
, a member of the team and a scientist at LANL Labs, said the discovery essentially tells us that life here has potential growth conditions and may exist on ancient Mars.
the editor-in-chief of The Editor-in-Chief circle the origin of life? An important hypothesis is that the first cell replication used RNA, and dna replication only emerged after a very long evolution.
that is, the stable preparation of RNA is the basis for triggering the origin of life.
, the search for conditions for RNA formation, including the discovery of borates, is naturally an important part of what scientists are looking for.
of course, the "reasonable" presumption of all this makes sense if the origin of life does occur according to linear logic.
source: Science and Technology Daily.