John Carter may be a far-off fantasy, but a new study conducted on 10 meteorites from Mars shows that the Red Planet may have the basic building blocks of life.
Published in Science, the study, presented by a team of scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science, found what is called "reduced carbon" in some of the meteors, and concluded that the carbon originated from Mars and not from Earth. Reduced carbon is carbon that has bonded with itself.
The lead scientist, Dr Andrew Steele, spoke with the BBC and explained why this is such a big discovery:
"Without carbon, the building blocks of life cannot exist... So it is reduced carbon that, with hydrogen, with oxygen, with nitrogen make up the organic molecules of life."
