Is There Life on Mars?
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By :
Irsan Kao
Submitted
2010-03-13 08:27:02 |
Planet Mars has been a topic of controversy amongst the scientific community. Many believe the possibility of life on the planet while others support their disbelief through scientific evidence.
The famous “face” that appeared on the landscape of the planet, has now disappeared. The answer lies in the dust storms that gradually erode the Martian landscape. It was hypothesized that aliens created the face years ago when our planet was still a mass of gas. However, the recent research concludes the face as the natural phenomenon created by the Martian dust storms.
A team of NASA and Stanford University researchers in 1996 surprised the world when they published findings that meteorites recovered from the Allen Hills region of Antarctica contained evidence of possible past life on Mars. However, the topic remains debatable, when some scientists provided strong evidences against the sporadic discovery.
In the beginnings of 2005, NASA researchers claimed evidences reflecting a strong possibility of life on the Red Planet. Remarkable biological activity recorded in caves and sustained by pockets of water on Earth has been discovered on Mars.
Extremophiles are microbes that thrive in the most hostile environments like nuclear reactors, sub zero temperatures and comfortably swimming in boiling water. They are employed to feed on oil spills in the ocean and others have medicinal application. But for many scientists, these enduring microbes are interesting as they suggest the potential for life on other planets.
These microbes have known to exist in high concentration of magnesium chloride, ten folds higher than seawater concentration at 2.5 miles below sea level at an atmospheric pressure above 400, and lack of oxygen. With this exploding discovery scientists believe the possibility of life on other planets as well.
Ascertaining the nature of the subsurface on other planets is tricky, but there is growing evidence for hypersaline environments of Mars and Jupiter s moon, Europa. Indeed, Europa is believed to have a subsurface ocean rich in magnesium salts. Terry McGenity (Scientist University of Essex, Biodeep project)
On August 6, 1996, NASA discovered the evidence for the existence of fossil life on Mars on the SNC meteorite that was ejected into space by an asteroid impact on Mars about 15 million years ago, until it impacted in Antarctic ice field about 13,000 years ago, and was found in 1984. Popularly referred as Allen Hills 84001 or ALH 84001.
However, NASA does not support the claims made by the scientist community. In a press released published in 2005, it commented,
“NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect. NASA does not have any observational data from any current Mars missions that supports this claim. The work by the scientists mentioned in the reports cannot be used to directly infer anything about life on Mars, but may help formulate the strategy for how to search for Martian life. Their research concerns extreme environments on Earth as analogs of possible environments on Mars. No research paper has been submitted by them to any scientific journal asserting Martian life.
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Author Resource:-
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