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Just to clarify. This guy -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elachi in a conference in Rome today said that what they found in Mars was organic molecules. He said it was a "perhaps" because they still have to check the data. He also said that Curiosity can not say if an organic molecule is biological or not, so all they can say is that there are organic molecules. Again, perhaps, until the data checking ends and full data is presented.

All this reported by ANSA.

PD: it was in a conference in La Sapienza, in Rome, hardly a remote and/or obscure university/place.



Without more details this is not a very interesting new. Methane is an organic molecule and we have found it everywhere in space: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Extraterrestrial_methan...


In the soil. They found organic molecules in the soil. So no methane but something solid I guess. And remember, they couldn't find methane yet on mars, Curiosity results were negative. http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-rover-yet-to-find-methane-on...


It could be methane molecules bound to sand particles. It would be surprising not to find methane on a planet in our solar system.


For those who understand italian, here you have the news explained with details from the head of Scientific American in Italia, in video: http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/curiosity-sonda-marte/cat...




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