PROGRESS IN THE STUDY OF LIFE ON MARS

PROGRESS IN THE STUDY OF LIFE ON MARS. [PROGRESSI NELLO STUDIO DELLA VITA SU MARTE] Bianciardi, G., MS, MD, PhD. University of Siena (retired). Italy [email protected], [email protected] Abstract The search for signs of life on Mars is a focal point of planetary science. The exploration of life on Mars began with the Viking experiments on Mars (1976) and continued with the analysis of the Martian meteorite ALH84001 (1996) and the subsequent reassessment of the Viking data, which underlined the possibility of life on the present-day Mars (Bianciardi et al., 2012). A few weeks ago, an article by Hurowitz et al. (Nature, September 10, 2025) reported with great emphasis the discovery of biominerals such as vivianite and greigite on Mars. This fits into a large body of evidence that has emerged over the past 15 years: through morphological observations and fractal analyses of microstructures that are deeply reminiscent of microbialites/stromatolites (Rizzo & Cantasano, 2009; Bianciardi et al., 2014, 2015; Noffke, 2015), as well as microalgae (Rizzo, 2020; Latif, 2021; Bianciardi et al., 2021), present in Martian outcrops, even reaching high levels of significance (p<0.001) with mathematical analyses. The body of evidence at our disposal is such that we can already assume that we have confirmation of the existence of life on Mars and, perhaps, evidence of a process of Mars-Earth panspermia.