So, life on Mars...

[Bohandas]

it's almost exactly the premise of Night of the Living Dead (except that in Living Deadmis was Venus and not Mars)

 

[The Firebird]

Isn't that how every horrot movie starts?

(but more seriously, they'd get contaminated)

The current Mars samples were slated for return in the 2030s, but that is up in the air for budgetary reasons. There have been successful analyses of several asteroids which had material returned to Earth recently--Hayabusa2, and more recently OSIRIS-REX. In short they have to be very careful, but it is possible (some of my colleagues were involved in those analyses).

 

[haakon1]

What’s all this then?

 

[haakon1]

Or did you mean this?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Right, but the important part is that if panspermia is found to be true here, we are stuck with having no idea how common it might be for life to arise independently, and therefore no additional information on how abundant it might be in the wider universe. But if we find that microbial life evolves pretty anywhere it is possible given enough time, that paints an entirely different picture.

Studding the "handedness" of certain organic molecules could give an indication, should we ever reach the point of having a significant sample size.