• Question: do you think that three was once life on mars?

    Asked by samisno1 to Carla, Madgie, Nick, Vicky, Werner on 19 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Werner Muller

      Werner Muller answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      This is a difficult question. Scientist believe that at least the environment on Mars was once compatible with life. They are now searching for signs that would indicate if life was once existent on Mars.
      You may want to check this mission during the next few month:
      http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/

    • Photo: Nick Groves-Kirkby

      Nick Groves-Kirkby answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      My gut feeling is that there wasn’t. But that’s just a guess.

      As Werner says, people are looking very hard at this so we might know more at some point. Finding signs of extraterrestrial life would be a really big development for science.

    • Photo: Vicky Forster

      Vicky Forster answered on 20 Nov 2013:

      I have a friend who is a mars geologist! She says that there is a lot of evidence that there was once water on Mars, as she can see the shapes of the rivers and lake by studying maps, but may or may not be now. However this doesen’t necessarily mean that life exists/existed – Mars’ atmosphere is very different to ours, meaning that it wouldn’t be able to support human life easily. However, we have no reason to believe that life on Mars would be anything like life on Earth – martian lifeforms might not even need water, so currently we are just looking for things which would support life like ours – but really we have no idea what life on Mars might look like if it’s not similar to something we have on Earth.

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