Mars, clays and the origins of life

To detect life in the Martian soil, tests were designed to look for respiration and photosynthesis. Both tests (labeled release, LR, and pyrolytic release, PR) for life in the Martian soils were positive. However, when the measurement for organic molecules in the soil of Mars was made, none were found. The interpretation given is that the inorganic constituents of the soil of Mars were responsible for these observations. The inorganic analysis of the soil was best fitted by a mixture of minerals: 60 to 80 percent clay, iron oxide, quartz, and soluble salts such as halite (NaCl). The minerals most successful in simulating the PR and LR experiments are iron-rich clays. There is a theory that considers clays as the first organisms capable of replication, mutation, and catalysis, and hence of evolving. Clays are formed when liquid water causes the weathering of rocks. The distribution of ions such as aluminum, magnesium, and iron play the role of bases in the DNA. The information was stored in the distribution of ions in the octahedral and tetrahedral molecules, but that they could, like RNA and DNA, replicate. When the clays replicated, each sheet of clay would be a template for a new sheet. The ion substitutions in one clay sheet would give rise to a complementary or similar pattern on the clay synthesized on its surface. It was theorized that it was on the surface of replicating iron-rich clays that carbon dioxide would be fixed in the light into organic acids such as formic or oxalic acid. If Mars had liquid water during a warm period in its past, clay formation would have been abundant. These clays would have replicated and evolved until the liquid water was removed due to cooling of Mars. It is entirely possible that the Viking mission detected life on Mars, but it was clay life that awaits the return of water to continue its evolution into life based on organic molecules.