Looking for life on Mars could be hampered by 'false biosignatures' created by chemical actions

NASA's Perseverance rover is exploring Mars for signs of fossilized life, but it could be thrown off by'false biosignatures,' fossil-like specimens that are actually created by chemical processes, according to a new study. Astrobiologists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford note that the rocks on the Red Planet are likely to have'numerous types of non-biological deposits,' which could make it harder to decipher what is rock and what could be signs of ancient life, assuming it once existed. The astrobiologists say that telling the difference is important for not only the Perseverance rover mission and other current NASA missions to Mars, but future missions as well. There are'dozens of processes' and potentially more yet to be discovered – that are capable of producing deposits that look like bacterial cells and carbon-based molecules that look like the known building blocks of life. Looking for life on Mars (including the Perseverance rover, shown) could be thrown off by'false biosignatures,' fossil-like specimens that are created by chemical processes The rocks on the Red Planet likely have a number of non-biological deposits,' making it harder to decipher what's rock and what could be life'We have been fooled by life-mimicking processes in the past,' the study's co-author, Dr Julie Cosmidis, said in a statement. 'On many occasions, objects that looked like fossil microbes were described in ancient rocks on Earth and even in meteorites from Mars, but after deeper examination they turned out to have non-biological origins.