• Question: do you think there was life on Mars?

    Asked by Lara A to Christian, Alice, Bose, Emma, Steve on 10 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by Ipsita.
    • Photo: Alice Harpole

      Alice Harpole answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      Maybe at some point. There are some theories that life on Earth may have actually started somewhere else and been brought here by comets. If that is so, then similar life-carrying comets may have crashed into Mars. In the past, Mars was a lot warmer than it is today, and so it would have been much easier for life to survive. There’s even evidence that Mars had liquid water (and still has a little during the martian summer when some of the ice on its surface melts). I’m pretty sure though that any life that ever lived on Mars in the past is almost certainly dead nowadays!

    • Photo: Steve Marsden

      Steve Marsden answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      It’s currently thought that Mars at one point had seas and temperatures similar to those on Earth. Not only that, but it had them for much longer than it took life to develop here. There’s little to no chance that complicated life evolved, but I’d be very surprised if we don’t find the fossilised remains of single celled organisms.

      Some people even believe that simple organisms could still be living in pockets of ice below the surface.

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