Editorial: Liquid evidence, life on Mars?
This January 14, 2011 image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show portions of the Martian surface in unprecedented detail. Credit: Getty/HO
Scientists from the University of Arizona have published a new paper that's out of this world: Dark streaks depicted expanding across the Martian surface are believed to be caused by flowing water.
This new finding significantly increases the likelihood that extraterrestrial life could exist on another planet. Though scientists have long known that ice is present under the Martian surface and at its poles, the extreme freezing temperatures made the possibility of life unlikely. Liquid water, however, is the necessary ingredient to sustaining all known forms of life.
Humans have always been fascinated with Mars. Movies and novels have long entertained the notion that our neighboring red planet was teeming with little green men.
But until now, the scientific evidence didn't support the imaginings. NASA space probes have so far yielded no signs of another organism, and the red planet's atmosphere seems much too dry and its soil too corrosive to support any sort of growth. Hopes of finding life in outer space had largely dissipated. But this recent discovery should revive our fascination, prompting us to ask whether we really are alone in the universe.
The microscopic aliens we may eventually find on Mars probably won't take the form of the little green men that we've always envisioned. But these new findings do take us a step closer, perhaps, to someday discovering that the vast and empty universe isn't so empty after all. hN
