Unknown ancient Lifeform discovered

 Discovery of a possibly unknown ancient Lifeform in the strange stone tunnels by Geologists

Scientists discovered unusual, narrow tunnels within ancient desert rocks in Namibia, Oman and Saudi Arabia. These parallel channels are unlike typical geological formations. Researchers are exploring the possibility that microorganisms, known to live inside rocks, created these ordered pathways. This finding could expand our understanding of life in extreme environments and guide the search for extraterrestrial life. Following are the some of the important points:-

Mysterious micro-burrows in desert marble and limestone were probably made by microbes that lived millions of years ago.

Exactly what kind of microbes bored into the rock remains unknown, as does whether they still exist or have long since gone extinct.

Whatever formed the burrows had to be alive, since researchers were able to rule out weathering and abiotic processes.

For most organisms on Earth, rocks are objects, not food. But for one oddball microbe, desert limestone seems to have been on the menu. Whether or not this mysterious form of life still exists or went extinct eons ago is, however, yet unknown. Geologist Cees Passchier from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz came across what looked like tiny burrows in marble and limestone in the deserts of Namibia, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Erosion had exposed the fossil burrows, and while nothing was crawling in there anymore, Passchier and his research team investigated further and found biological material inside. These parallel channels are unlike typical geological formations.

The deserts of Namibia, Oman and Saudi Arabia don’t give away much easily. Stand there long enough, and it feels like nothing has changed for thousands of years. Wind pushes sand across open land. Heat presses down. Marble and limestone rise out of the ground in pale, silent ridges. Which is why what scientists found inside some of those rocks feels so unexpected. They weren’t looking for life. They were studying stone. Instead, they noticed thin tunnels running through solid rock. Not wide cracks. Not jagged fractures. These were narrow passages, barely half a millimeter across, stretching up to 3 cm's in length. Even more curious, they appeared in parallel lines, neat, repeated, almost measured. “A biotic origin of the observed structures supposes the presence of liquid water, without which biological growth would be impossible,” the team said. “The investigated areas are currently arid, but experience occasional rain showers and regular dense coastal fog, while wet periods occurred in the past.” The structures were documented by Professor Cees Passchier from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and described this in the Geomicrobiology Journal. His team called them “micro-burrows” because they didn’t fit with known geological processes. When stone splits under pressure, it follows stress patterns. When water erodes it, the surface turns rough and uneven. These channels are different. They are smooth inside. They run in the same direction. They appear in groups. Some of the tunnels even contain calcium carbonate and faint chemical traces which could hint at biological material. That’s where the conversation shifts. Not dramatically, but quietly. Could something have moved through this rock?

So, what type of microogranisms could have made the burrows? Bacteria, fungi and lichens have shown that they can survive extreme conditions, and some of them are endolithic, meaning they live inside rocks. Passchier wanted to see if the organisms that created the burrows could possibly belong to any of these groups. Fungi can bore through rocks and leave behind tubes, and some types of cyanobacteria also thrive off limestone or marble. Scientists have known for decades that microbes can live inside rock. Endoliths survive in extreme conditions by taking shelter within the stone itself. Earlier, researcher Geoffrey Michael Gadd described how certain bacteria and fungi draw nutrients directly from minerals. In simple terms, they extract energy from the rock. In Antarctica and some of the driest deserts on Earth, these microbes live just beneath the surface. The rock shields them from ultraviolet radiation and temperature swings. They grow slowly, sometimes so slowly that their activity unfolds over geological timescales. But there’s a difference here. Known endolithic activity usually leaves irregular textures rather than long, parallel channels. The desert tunnels appear more ordered than what scientists typically observe. Researchers are now asking whether chemotaxis could play a role. Chemotaxis is the ability of microorganisms to move toward chemical signals. An earlier review by Wadhams and Armitage explains how microbes can respond to chemical gradients in a coordinated manner. Over long periods, movement guided by nutrients could, in theory, produce organized pathways.

It is unlikely that the mystery organisms were cyanobacteria, they need sunlight for photosynthesis, so they don’t bore nearly as deep into rock as the burrows that the team found. Fungi secrete digestive agents which were not present in the rock, and they also create a complex network of hyphae, or filaments, known as a mycelium. Mycelial networks tend to have order to them. The burrows were parallel and evenly spaced, which would be unusual for fungi, and there were no other patterns observed. So, they probably aren’t the culprits, either. Beneath our feet lies something scientists call the deep biosphere, a vast underground ecosystem which survives without sunlight. Microbial life can persist km's below the surface, sustained by chemical reactions instead of photosynthesis. If these stone tunnels turn out to be biological, they would add another piece to that picture. They would suggest that life not only survives in extreme, dry environments, but may also shape its surroundings in more structured ways than previously recognized. There’s also a planetary angle. When researchers search for past life on Mars, they often focus on subsurface environments. Surface conditions there are harsh, but underground niches may once have offered protection. Understanding how microbes interact with rock on Earth could guide what scientists look for elsewhere.

Because the burrows were found to be too wide to have only been made by one organism at a time, and they showed growth rings, its was more likely that they were formed by colonies of microbes. Calcium carbonate dust found in the tunnels is also a common excretion from microbes that live in these types of rocks. However, no fossilized organisms have yet been found, just evidence of their existence. Sometimes, a narrow tunnel in limestone carries implications which stretch far beyond one desert. Still, the researchers are careful. Geologists are trained to question first impressions. Patterns can emerge from chemistry alone. Unusual mineral reactions might produce shapes that resemble biological traces. On the contrary, while weathering or abiotic chemical processes can create structures mistaken for signs of life, a thorough microscopic examination showed this was not the case. The chemical composition of rock samples from inside the burrows showed that whatever made them had to have been alive. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman once wrote about how naturally humans connect incomplete dots. Science works by resisting that impulse. Teams are now using high-resolution imaging and chemical testing to search for organic molecules inside the channels. Laboratory experiments are being designed to see whether known microbes can reproduce similar formations under controlled conditions.

“As no known chemical or physical weathering mechanism can explain this phenomenon with the microstructural and geochemical observations presented here, and the micro-burrows form inside the host rock,” Passchier and his colleagues said, “we suggest that they are of biological origin.” For now, the tunnels remain an open question. And maybe that’s what makes them compelling. In landscapes which seem empty, in rocks that feel ancient and unchanging, there may be stories still unfolding at a scale too small to see at first glance. Sometimes discovery doesn’t arrive with a dramatic breakthrough. Sometimes it begins with someone looking closely at stone, and noticing that the lines don’t quite add up. Whatever microbes carved out the tunnels have been long dead, though there are questions around whether the mystery species still exists. Maybe it’s still creeping around somewhere, digging new tunnel systems for us to one day uncover further.

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Latest about what Rover found on Mars

 Non-Life Explanations about what Rover found on Mars by NASA

Last year, NASA’s Curiosity rover made a fascinating discovery after boring into a suspected ancient lake bed on Mars: long-chain organic molecules, called alkanes, which could serve as a potential chemical relic of ancient life on the Red Planet. The molecules, researchers suggested at the time, could have derived from fatty acids, which are common building blocks of cell membranes on Earth, once again strengthening the case that Mars could’ve been teeming with life billions of years ago. It was just another tantalizing clue in our search for extraterrestrial life, not the smoking gun we’ve all been waiting for. At that time scientists studying a rock sample collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover disclosed something tantalizing: the largest organic molecules ever detected on Mars. The compounds, decane, undecane, and dodecane, may be fragments of fatty acids, which on Earth are most often linked to life. While non-living processes like meteorite impacts can also create such molecules, researchers found those sources couldn’t fully explain the amounts detected.

Nonetheless, scientists continue to be fascinated by the finding. A team led by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Alexander Pavlov argues that the presence of these molecules, despite the millions of years of destructive radiation that pummeled the Martian surface after it lost much of its atmosphere,  “cannot be readily explained” by non-biological processes alone. One theory is that carbon-rich dust particles and meteorites could have deposited these long-chain organic molecules on the surface, with the ancient Martian atmosphere allowing the organics to accumulate billions of years ago. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took a selfie at a location nicknamed Mary Anning after a 19th-century English paleontologist. Curiosity snagged three samples of drilled rock at this site on its way out of the Glen Torridon region. A new scientific analysis suggests that known non biological processes cannot fully explain the amount of organic material discovered in a rock collected on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover. Organic compounds are carbon containing molecules that form the chemical building blocks of life as we know it. They can be created by living organisms, but some can also form through natural chemical reactions that do not involve life. Curiosity, which has been exploring Gale Crater since 2012, carries a miniature chemistry lab designed to heat rock samples and analyze the gases they release. Using this onboard laboratory, scientists detected several intriguing compounds in a drilled rock sample.

Nonetheless, scientists stopped well short of making any definitive statements about life on the Red Planet. After all, there could be still-unknown, non-biological processes we don’t know about that could have resulted in the observed concentration of long-chain carbon molecules on Mars. “We agree with Carl Sagan’s claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and understand that any purported detection of life on Mars will necessarily be met with intense scrutiny,” they concluded. “In addition, in practice with established norms in the field of astrobiology, we note that the certainty of a life detection beyond Earth will require multiple lines of evidence.” Curiosity's instruments can identify molecules, but they cannot directly determine how those molecules formed. Because of this limitation, researchers could not tell whether the compounds were produced by biological activity or by non living chemical processes. To explore that question, scientists conducted a follow up investigation focused on known non biological sources. One possibility is that meteorites striking Mars delivered organic material to the surface. Meteorites are known to contain carbon based molecules, and impacts have been common throughout Martian history. The team evaluated whether this type of external delivery, along with other abiotic chemical reactions, could account for the levels of organic compounds measured in the sample.

The researchers reported that the non biological mechanisms they examined could not fully account for the abundance of organic compounds detected by Curiosity. Based on their analysis, they concluded that it is reasonable to consider the possibility that living organisms could have contributed to the formation of these molecules. This does not mean life has been confirmed on Mars. Instead, it suggests that non living explanations alone may not be sufficient to explain the data. However, Pavlov and his colleagues aren’t convinced. After studying how 80 million years’ worth of pelting radiation could have affected these molecules, they concluded that prior to the loss of the planet’s atmosphere, the concentration of these alkanes was likely much higher than previously thought. To help explain their findings, they took into account other non-biological processes in an attempt to arrive at their inferred original abundance,  but couldn’t, even after combining all of them. In other words, biological processes like the ones observed on Earth are still a leading theory, even after researchers’ best efforts to find a non-life explanation. “We argue that such high concentrations of long-chain alkanes are inconsistent with a few known abiotic sources of organic molecules on ancient Mars,” they said.

Earlier, researchers announced they had identified trace amounts of decane, undecane, and dodecane. These are hydrocarbons, meaning they are made only of carbon and hydrogen atoms. They belong to a group of molecules that can be related to fatty acids. Fatty acids are important components of cell membranes in living organisms on Earth, although similar molecules can also form through purely geological reactions under certain conditions. The rock that contained these compounds is an ancient mudstone located in Gale Crater. Mudstone forms from fine grained sediment that once settled in water, suggesting the area may have hosted lakes billions of years ago. Scientists proposed that the molecules detected by Curiosity could be fragments of fatty acids that were preserved in the rock over vast stretches of time. Nonetheless, it’s a tantalizing waypoint in our longstanding efforts to determine whether Mars, a planet that was once covered in huge oceans, rivers and lakes, could have supported life. Pavlov and his colleagues are now calling for further research into how radiation degraded these intriguing molecules under Mars-like conditions to shed more light on the matter.

To better understand how much organic material may have originally been present, the scientists combined laboratory radiation experiments, computer simulations, and Curiosity's measurements. Mars lacks a thick atmosphere and a global magnetic field like Earth's, which means its surface is constantly exposed to cosmic radiation. Over time, this radiation can break apart complex molecules. The team attempted to "rewind the clock" by about 80 million years, which is how long the rock is estimated to have been exposed at the Martian surface. By modeling how radiation gradually destroys organic molecules, they calculated how much material would have existed before being degraded. Their results indicate that the original quantity of organic compounds was likely far greater than what typical non biological processes are known to produce. The researchers emphasize that further experiments are necessary to understand how quickly organic molecules break down in Mars like rocks under Mars like environmental conditions. Laboratory studies that better replicate Martian temperatures, radiation levels, and chemistry will help refine these estimates. Until more data are available, scientists cannot draw firm conclusions about whether these compounds point to past life or can ultimately be explained through chemistry alone. What the findings do show is that the chemical story preserved in Martian rocks may be more complex and more intriguing than previously thought.

Muhammad (Peace be upon him) Name