Scientists claim that life cannot exist on Mars

Scientists claim that life cannot exist on Mars

Research conducted in the Imperial College London has claimed that life could not exist on the surface of Mars because the planet has experienced a 600 million year "super-drought". The
research concluded after the analysis of soil from the red planet that its surface had been dry for such a long time that any life would have to be lurking deep underground.

Researchers deduced that Mars had water present during a warmer period lasting up to 5,000 years in the distant past, but this would have been too little time for life to establish itself
on the surface. The findings published in the Geophysical Research Letters journal were based on soil collected during the 2008 Nasa Phoenix mission to Mars.

The scientists have spent three years analysing the surface of the planet to see whether life is possible on its surface and finally they have come up with a conclusion. The Imperial College
London researchers showed that soil on Mars is formed under similarly arid conditions to the Moon.

The scientists took soil samples from Mars’s icy northern arctic region and conducted studies on them which finally revealed that the entire planet is covered with the same type of soil
that cannot generate life.

Dr Tom Pike, who led the research, said, “We found that even though there is an abundance of ice, Mars has been experiencing a super-drought that may well have lasted hundreds of millions
of years. We think the Mars we know today contrasts sharply with its earlier history, which had warmer and wetter periods and which may have been more suited to life.”

He added, “Future NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) missions that are planned for Mars will have to dig deeper to search for evidence of life, which may still be taking refuge underground.”

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Posted by Zeeshan Gohar on Feb 28 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry