In 1996 Nasa and the White House made the explosive announcement that the rock contained traces of Martian bugs. The meteorite, catalogued as Allen Hills (ALH) 84001, crashed onto the frozen wastes of Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984. Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike.

NASA's Curiosity rover has made a'mind-blowing' discovery on Mars that scientists said'should not be there.' The one-ton rover uncovered yellowish-green crystals of pure sulfur during its search for chemical evidence that the Red Planet was once habitable. While minerals containing sulfur have been observed in the Martian world, elemental sulfur on its own has never been seen before. Curiosity accidently cracked opening white stones as it traveled through the Gediz Vallis channel, revealing the'strange' structures that add to the growing evidence that Mars was once a habitable world. Previous research has suggested that sulfur may have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth more than four billion years ago when the atmosphere was rich in sulfur and carbon, which was emitted through volcanic activity.