A space agency specialist shared a theory according to which living organisms can live on Mars even now.
There is life on Mars, at least in its primitive form. This was stated by NASA employee Alfred McEwen from the University of Arizona during the Starmus science festival in the Canary Islands.
The simplest forms of life - bacteria - can survive for billions of years in the depths of the Martian glaciers, as they survive in the Arctic lakes of the Earth, the planetary scientist believes. Moreover, he believes that terrestrial and Martian bacteria may have the same origin.
In McEven's theory, it all began at a time when meteorites actively "bombarded" the Earth and Mars, literally breaking off fragments from the planets. Almost certainly the planets could "infect" each other with life, if it arose on one of them. On Earth, conditions for evolution turned out to be more favorable than on Mars, that's why life flourished here. But this does not mean that it has disappeared from the Red Planet: the descendants of the first microorganisms can survive here in the present conditions.
Interestingly fits into the concept of Alfred McEven and the question of the primary source of life. So far, the scientist assumes two equal probabilities. First: that life arose on Earth and then "went" to Mars at the behest of meteorites and other cosmic phenomena. The second probability sounds even crazier: the first living organisms arrived on our planet from Mars. If this is the case, then scientists have an increased chance of detecting Martian bacteria in the frozen soil of the Red Planet.
Alfred McEaven's theory, of course, is based on a lot of assumptions and is practically not supported by real facts. On the other hand, one cannot say that his hypothesis is pseudoscientific - that Mars can conceal some simple forms of life or is potentially capable of this, many scientists from the same NASA have already said.
In early 2015, the Curiosity rover found evidence that Mars was suitable for life - in the soil of the planet, the device found nitrogen, which is necessary for living organisms. A unique soil composition was discovered in the Gale Crater area. Scientists have found that the heating of sedimentary minerals collected by the rover from this area leads to the release of nitrogen dioxide. This means that 3.7 billion years ago, there was a lake with unsalted water in this crater, which could have been a habitat for living bacteria.
And recently, a team of scientists from the United States discovered manganese oxide in the rocks of Mars, after which it was concluded that in ancient times this planet was practically an analogue of the Earth. At the same time, the question of where manganese oxide came from on Mars put scientists in a difficult position. Under the conditions of our planet, the formation of this substance depends on one of two reasons. The first is a high level of oxygen, the second is the presence of special microorganisms.
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Let us also recall that on March 14, 2016, a Proton-M launch vehicle with modules from the ExoMars project, the first in the history of the Russian-European mission to search for life on Mars, was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome. The flight to the "terminal station" will take more than six months, the start of ExoMars on the planet is scheduled for mid-2017.
