Astronomy

You're reading Could There Be Life On Mars, posted on Sunday, December 21st, 2008 at 6:40 pm in News, Planet Science, on BrainBloggers at the Astronomy blog. More after the jump.

NASA has some new information that is leading them to believe that Mars could support life. They used the special Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and scientists were able to discover carbonate minerals on the surface of the planet.

For the longest time scientists believed that the environment on Mars was acidic – but because carbonates dissolve in acid they have decided to rethink things. NASA said that these new breakthrough findings lead them to believe that different watery environments once existed. This could mean that it once supported life.

“Although we have not found the types of carbonate deposits which might have trapped an ancient atmosphere,” said Bethany Ehlmann – a spectrometer team member from Brown University, in a statement, “we have found evidence that not all of Mars experienced an intense, acidic weathering environment 3.5 billion years ago, as has been proposed. We’ve found at least one region that was potentially more hospitable to life.”

While they believe that life once existed they still have no hard evidence and have not found any alien life. NASA went on to say that they believe there is “strong evidence pointing to primitive bacterial life on Mars.”

They came to this conclusion after finding a meteorite on Earth that they believe came from Mars. The minerals found on the meteorite “bear strong resemblance to mineral alterations caused by primitive bacteria on Earth,” according to NASA.