Another excellent article from Creation Ministries concerning the mysterious Red Planet. The author, Andrew Sibley’s, fascinating biography can be accessed by clicking on his name just below. Consider supporting this hugely effective Christian Ministry by subscribing to Creation Magazine:

https://creation.com/en/creation-magazine

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

by Andrew Sibley

The belief that there is life on Mars is a claim that refuses to die. It has a long history, stretching back at least to the 17^th century; for example in Fontenelle’s Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds.^1,2,3 Creation Ministries has reported on the quest to find life on Mars over the years Life on Mars?, Water on Mars?, Mars red planet, and we can imagine that there will be further articles to respond to in the future. The latest claims involve the discovery of chemical signatures on the red planet, and comes from NASA space mission research.^4,5 The finds were reported with excitement in the media; the BBC suggesting it represented “the most tantalising evidence yet of potential past life on the Red Planet.”⁶The belief that there is life on Mars is a claim that refuses to die. It has a long history, stretching back at least to the 17^th century.

What has been found

The robotic rover Perseverance has found chemical signals on Mars, called leopard spots, that secular scientists have suggested could be biosignatures (markers for ancient organic life). Planetary scientists believe that in the distant past Mars once had an oxygen-rich atmosphere,⁷ and oceans, both sufficient to support life. The planet now is dry with a very thin atmosphere, largely composed of carbon dioxide. The solar wind has perhaps stripped the planet of its atmosphere and water. The surface pressure is about one percent that of Earth, and exposed to solar and cosmic radiation 50 times higher than on Earth.

The sample of the spots was collected from a dry riverbed in a location called Cheyava Falls, in Jezero Crater. The rock is believed to be relatively young, from the Martian Bright Angel formation. It is composed of clay and silt, but contained compounds of sulphur and phosphorus, together with organic (carbon-containing) compounds⁸ and oxidized iron (what we call rust).

The Mars Perseverance rover has two specific instruments which were used to investigate the sample: PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), and SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals). From the study the team identified two iron-rich chemicals: vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate Fe₃(PO₄)₂·8H₂O), and greigite (iron sulphide Fe₃S₄). On Earth, vivianite is often found in peat, sediment, and around rotting organic matter. Greigite can also be produced by some types of microbial life on Earth.

However, as well as biological sources of generation, the chemicals can be formed abiotically (without biological entities being involved). These chemical reactions occur through processes involving high temperature and acidic conditions. The researchers did not find evidence of these conditions, instead suggesting they were formed at cooler temperatures and in a non-acidic environment—this they believe supports the biogenetic origin. Abiotic electron-transfer, which is involved in the chemical reactions, may also be enabled by the presence of certain catalysts, but the scientists admit they do not know whether such catalysing conditions were present. The lead author of the scientific paper, Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University, New York, stated:

“The combination of chemical compounds we found in the Bright Angel formation could have been a rich source of energy for microbial metabolisms. But just because we saw all these compelling chemical signatures in the data didn’t mean we had a potential biosignature. We needed to analyze what that data could mean.”⁴

Katie Stack Morgan, who is a project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, admitted that claims involving ancient extraterrestrial life in space “require extraordinary evidence.” However, she commented further that this piece of research is a “crucial step” towards further work, and that publication showed their work to be scientifically rigorous. She commented that “while abiotic explanations for what we see at Bright Angel are less likely given the paper’s findings, we cannot rule them out.”.⁴ Of course, it is ‘less likely’ only if you assume the presence of life on Mars as a prior commitment.God chose to create life here on Earth through his wisdom and power, and … even the simplest organism is vastly more complex than something the universe could form by chance.

Summary

The search for life-on-Mars is justified by the belief that life arose by chance on Earth. The logic being that if life got started here on Earth by natural processes alone, then why not on other planets? But they forget that God chose to create life here on Earth through his wisdom and power, and that even the simplest organism is vastly more complex than something the universe could form by chance. Again, it is the godless agenda of secular science that is seeking to prove the impossible.

Published: 2 October 2025

References and notes

1. Fontenelle, B., The Plurality of other Worlds, Gunning, E. (trans.), Paternoster-Row, London, 1803. First published in 1686 (Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes). The dialogue discussed space travel and the possibility of life on other planets in the solar system. Return to text.
2. Allsop, J., The long history of life on Mars, newyorker.com, 29 Aug 2025. Return to text.
3. Sibley, A., Deep time in 18th-century France—part 1: a developing belief, J. Creation 33(1):85–92, Apr 2019. Return to text.
4. Taveau, J., NASA says Mars Rover discovered potential biosignature last year, nasa.com, 10 Sep 2025. Return to text.
5. Hurowitz, J.A., Tice, M.M., Allwood, A.C., et al., Redox-driven mineral and organic associations in Jezero Crater, Mars. Nature 645: 332–340, 2025 | doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09413-0 Return to text.
6. Morelle, R., Life on Mars? ‘Leopard-spot’ rocks could be biggest clue yet, bbc.co.uk, 10 Sep 2025. Return to text.
7. Coghlan, A., First direct evidence of ancient Mars’s oxygen-rich atmosphere, newscientist.com, 22 Apr 2016. Return to text.
8. The word ‘organic’ is here used in the chemical sense, which is the study of carbon-containing compounds, rather than the popular one that implies the identified chemicals are related to former living