You’ll probably never meet a meteorite as popular as Allan Hills 84001.
Named for the Antarctic ice field where it was found in 1984, the celestial rock made worldwide news. People wrote books about it. The President of the United States delivered a televised speech about it.
What made Allan Hills 84001 so intriguing?
This meteorite came from Mars. Soon, scientists discovered something else: This Martian rock held signs of life.
Not so fast, say the scientists behind a new study. A closer look at the meteorite reveals a different story. Despite the news, books, and speech—this rock doesn’t contain signs of life.
So why did scientists think the meteorite revealed life on Mars?
In 1996, they studied the aerolite with an electron microscope. The astounded scientists saw tiny compounds rich in carbon, and these compounds looked like bacteria. On Earth, carbon forms the basis for every type of biomass. DNA, proteins, fats—all are made of carbon.
To the scientists, that meant one thing: life. Something living had left behind tiny fossils in the rock, or so they thought.
The news spread. Humanity had dreamed of finding Martian life as early as the 1800s. Science-fiction writers imagined contact with Martian lifeforms. Of course, Martians in books looked more like people than bacteria. But had we finally discovered alien life?
Spoiler alert: Nope.
According to the new study, those tiny carbon compounds didn’t come from life. They came from water.
Back on Mars, water flowed through tiny cracks in the rock. Over time, this created little clumps of carbon that looked like bacteria. The same thing can happen on Earth.
Could life still exist on Mars? Maybe. But not on this rock.
This isn’t the first false alarm. In 1877, scientists studied the Red Planet through telescopes. They saw straight lines across its surface. These lines looked like canals, and if they were canals, who dug them? They had only one answer: Martian life.
But these lines weren’t actually canals. Poorly made telescopes had caused an optical illusion. To the human eye, this illusion looked like straight lines crisscrossing the planet. Sure enough, when NASA finally sent spacecraft to photograph Mars, the images showed exactly zero canals.
God gave us a universe to observe. He gave us minds that can study and learn. When we contemplate the universe, we learn something about its Creator.
But we also need humility to admit that our assumptions can be wrong. Science can take us to the Moon. It might take us to Mars. But sometimes, scientists mistake clumps of carbon for life.
Why? Science can tell us a lot about creation. But it also has limits—and so do we.
