More than 3.5 billion years ago, a blitz of meteors ricocheted around the solar system, passing material between the two fledgling planets. This galactic game of pingpong may have left bits of Earth on Mars, and vice versa, creating a shared genetic ancestry between the two planets.
Such a theory holds great appeal for Christopher Carr, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. He and his colleagues are building a DNA sequencer that may one day be sent to Mars, to analyze soil and ice samples for traces of DNA and other genetic material.
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Read the full article here: Detecting DNA in space
