On Thursday, NASA announced that its Curiosity rover had discovered organic material—carbon containing molecules that are essential building blocks for life—within Gale Crater, a 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock that scientists believed might have held a lake. The Curiosity rover also confirmed signs of methane—the gas originated by animal and plant life on Earth. Scientists believe that these dual discoveries potentially prove that life might have either originated on Mars or existed at one time. Astrobiologists say the next step is figuring out where the methane is seeping from; while it’s most likely a result of a geological process, a biological source can't be ruled out.
