Recently the Curiosity rover on planet Mars was able to discover boron at the Murray Buttes in Gale Crater. The presence of boron, which was found in light-toned calcium sulfate veins, has excited the scientific community considerably. That’s not just because we have more clues about what’s on the surface of Mars, but also because Borates play an important part in building life blocks.

Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory says that Borates are one possible bridge from simple organic molecules to RNA (ribonucleic acid). Without RNA, you have no life. The presence of boron tells us that, if organics were present on Mars, these chemical reactions could have occurred.

Since the boron was discovered in a mineral vein, that means that it was present in groundwater. This would allow microscopic life as we know it to be possible under the given conditions. Basically it comes down to the fact that life may have existed on Mars, even if it was simple celled. This in turn bodes well for those of us belonging to the multi-celled species, especially those working on a science project to go live on Mars in the future.