Naturally, organic simply means carbon is present in the (non-metal) structure. Generally carbon-carbon, carbon-hydrogen, and a few other bond-types are considered organic. Many articles prey on people’s misunderstanding of this in order to craft a good headline, since “carbon-based material” doesn’t sound as exciting as “organic material”.

And when they say it “be created by processes not related to life as we know it” they should also probably mention that it can be created in the absence of any life at all; since if that weren’t true then it would in fact be direct evidence of life.

Thank you. This is exactly why I tended to go right to the comments in Reddit, because inevitably an “expert” would comment on why the article headline was bullshit (an “expert” can be somebody with experience, a PhD, or just somebody who actually read the article). It’s so annoying how the news gets framed in order to increase the number of clicks on a page.

I am still betting we won’t find life there.

Mars had a wet past. If there had been life in that wet past it would have taken over the entire planet. A process we don’t see evidence for but should.

Which means that either life is rare or life on Mars was unlike life on earth. Of the two, the former requires less assumptions. The default is no life. The default is not life that is radically different than earth life.