Mars may once have teemed with alien life which lived under its surface for hundreds of millions of years.
That’s the suggestion from scientists who say ancient Mars is likely to have had an ‘ample supply of chemical energy’ which would have allowed tiny microorganisms to thrive underground. ‘We showed, based on basic physics and chemistry calculations, that the ancient Martian subsurface likely had enough dissolved hydrogen to power a global subsurface biosphere,’ said Jesse Tarnas, a graduate student at Brown University and lead author of a study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. ‘Conditions in this habitable zone would have been similar to places on Earth where underground life exists.’
Sadly, researchers do not believe Mars was home to little green men or lost extraterrestrial civilisations. If life ever did exist on the Red Planet, it is likely to take on a similar form to the tiny ‘subsurface lithotrophic microbial ecosystems’ (SLIME) found on Earth. The new study shows that a process called radiolysis in which radiation breaks down water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen parts would have created ‘plenty’ of hydrogen beneath the ancient Martian subsurface. The researchers estimated that hydrogen concentrations in the crust of Mars roughly four billion years ago would have at a similar level to places where microbes live on Earth today.
