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What is your gut instinct for microbial life on Mars?

And in the past? Are we going to fine fossils?



Probably. Make them pay for their own discovery.


I know a bunch of mysterious Mars images were debunked in the past, but I'd very much like to know real explanations about these:

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150828091203-mars-pyr...

https://i0.wp.com/planetaria.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/3...

http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/ox53f235bf.jpg



Life in the past: probably

Fossils: probably not, those require fairly specific conditions to form

Life now: probably not, but there's a chance.

We have multiple moons with liquid oceans in our solar system. That's where I would place my bets.


I'd be interested in hearing more about why Mars would be a bad place to find fossils?

We have found fossils from 3.5 billion year ago on Earth [0]. Assuming life formed and lived from Noachian - Hesperian periods what would prevent the conditions for fossilization happening at least one place over this very long period of time. I don't know much about Mars geology so what might be obvious to others may not be obvious to me.

[0]: https://news.wisc.edu/oldest-fossils-found-show-life-began-b...


Watched a show recently that indicated that it's likely that Mars encountered a similar event to the presumed Earth/Moon collision, but Mars didn't fare so well. Mars was left lacking a singular large moon to protect it and a fairly unstable wobble of its rotation. It apparently moves between a global ice age to a far more temperate climate around every 120K years. Coupled with a lack of a magnetic field to protect its atmosphere, it's been stripped of most of what we think of life harboring facilities such as atmosphere and prevailing liquid water. This is mostly a recap of what I saw a Science Channel show, so don't judge me too hard - just trying to recap. Definitely not my area of expertise.


I would happily bet good money we will find strong evidence for life on Mars within 10 years of humans' landing (and staying) there.


Life appeared really quickly on Earth as soon as there were oceans so I'm pretty bullish on the idea that there were microbes on Mars at one point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_h...




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