Boron discovery suggests Martian habitability

Researchers believe life may have existed on Mars, after the discovery of boron by the Curiosity rover. Scientists have hypothesised the existence of a ‘RNA world’ composed of RNA strands that contain genetic information and the ability to replicate. An integral part of RNA is ribose, a sugar. Volatile on its own, it can be stabilised long enough by reacting with borate (boron dissolved in water) to become RNA.

Patrick Gosda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of the study, said: “We detected borates in a crater on Mars that's 3.8 billion years old, younger than the likely formation of life on Earth. Essentially, this tells us that the conditions from which life could have potentially grown may have existed on ancient Mars, independent from Earth."

The boron found was discovered in calcium sulphate mineral veins, suggesting it existed in Martian groundwater. Identified by Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument, it hints that groundwater in Gale Crater, where the landed, was habitable with temperatures between 0-60°C and a neutral to alkaline pH.

Gosda said: "Borates are one possible bridge from simple organic molecules to RNA. Without RNA, you have no life. The presence of boron tells us that, if organics were present on Mars, these chemical reactions could have occurred."

Curiosity is climbing a layered Martian mountain and discovering chemical evidence of how ancient lakes and wet underground environments changed, in methods that affected their potential to harbour microbial life. Whether Martian life has ever existed is still unknown.

The study was published in Geophysical Research Letters.