Next ORION meeting in Oak Ridge focuses on 'Geochemical Evidence of Life on Mars

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Next ORION meeting in Oak Ridge to focus on 'Geochemical Evidence of Life on Mars'
Juan Carbajo
The Oak Ridger
Fri, August 15, 2025 at 11:52 AM EDT
2 min read



Mars surface photo taken by the Viking-1 Lander.


The next ORION program will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 20, at the City Room, (Room A-111) in the McNally-Coffey building at Roane State Community College's Oak Ridge campus.

The title of the program is “Geochemical Evidence of Life on Mars” by John Cliff from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The program is free and open to the public. A live Zoom session will also be available. An abstract of the program follows.

There is yet to be a consensus opinion on a definition of life. Nevertheless, some characteristics of life include, organization, metabolism, homeostasis, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, and evolution. Despite the near statistical certainty of extant life throughout the universe, definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life has yet to be found. Active avenues of past and present inquiry include remote sensing and spectroscopy and in situ measurements of meteorites found on Earth and via robotic probes. Mars has received considerable attention with regard to exploring geochemical signatures for life in both meteorites found terrestrially and via remote probes sent to the Martian surface.

This talk will explore types of biosignatures that may be useful from the standpoint of remote probes using terrestrial examples and then focus on the evidence for Life on Mars from meteorites and in situ experiments conducted on the Martian regolith.

Cliff’s formal academic training includes a master's degree in environmental microbiology from West Virginia University, and a doctorate in Soil Science from Oregon State University. He was the first person to apply secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to explore process-level biogeochemistry in soil systems at sub-millimeter scales. He has since become a recognized authority on the use of this specialized analytical technique.

During his tenure at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the mid 2000s he helped to develop SIMS methodologies for nuclear and microbial forensic applications. Cliff spent a year as a cost-free expert at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Seibersdorf, Austria in 2007, followed by tenures at two scientific user facilities including the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility at the University of Western Australia and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, upon returning to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

While at the University of Western Australia, Cliff served as technical lead in the university’s successful bid to become a member of the IAEA’s Network of Analytical Laboratories for the detection of undeclared nuclear materials. The University of Western Australia is still the only university to achieve NWAL qualification.

Cliff began work at ORNL in late 2023 where he continues his work developing SIMS methodologies targeting nuclear nonproliferation applications. Cliff became an avid amateur astrophotographer while living in Washington state, and currently is building an observatory on his property near Kingston.

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Next ORION meeting to focus on 'Geochemical Evidence of Life on Mars'