• Question: Do you think that there is/was life on mars and why?

    Asked by Ed to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 12 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      It seems clear now that there was a lot of water on Mars early on. In the same period of time life started on the Earth, so I think there is a reasonable chance life started on Mars similarly. There is even a theory that life started on Mars and travelled to the Earth on meteorites. Nothing conclusive yet, but it seems that there is nothing that would make that impossible – so we could all be Martians!

      Whether there is life there now we don’t know. We’ve looked in a few places, but perhaps the best places to look at not the best places to send probes to, as the terrain is not a good place to land.
      If there is life, its probably underground and microbial in size.

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      I think that it’s definitely possible! As Julian says, we’ve seen plenty of evidence that there used to be flowing water on Mars a long time ago. There are river valleys and canyons, just like on Earth. Maybe if there was any life still there now, it’d be very small (like bacteria type things). It makes for good movies to have little green men, but it’s highly unlikely to be true in our solar system 😉 There’s actually a mission planned to Mars, landing in 2019 or so, (ExoMars maybe?) that will use a rover to drill far beneath the surface. If, as Julian says, there might be any life below the surface of Mars, this will be a good way to test that.

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