The discovery of tiny carbon-rich balls and tunnels inside a Martian meteorite has once again raised the possibility that the Red Planet was teeming with primitive life millions of years ago.

The meteorite, which fell to Earth during the Stone Age, contains microscopic burrows and spheres that resemble the marks microorganisms leave when they eat through rocks on Earth, scientists report in the journal Astrobiology this month. What’s more, these features seem to have been pressed into the Mars rock before it was hurled off the Red Planet by an impact event, the researchers add. (1)

We are so much unaware of what life actually is, that we are not even close to a consensus on what its results are.

What signs do you look for when searching for life in a meteorites?
What signs do you look for when searching for life in the universe?
What do YOU leave as evidence of your existence?

How is the cosmos different due to the existence of life?

If we are just playing by the rules (a.k.a. “physical laws”) then any “trace” we think we see is just another result of mindless physical processes going on for eternity.

But we know we are more than that.
We know our life leaves traces.

Just not the kind of traces that a SEM microscope could discover…