14 DAY TRIAL // If the resilience of Earth's lifeforms is any indication, then organisms could survive on Mars as well. Granted, not all areas of Red Planet may be inhabitable, but researchers think that lava tubes may provide the necessary environment for life to endure.
There are two main ways for Mars to have acquired life. First, it may have developed it on its own, like Earth is believed to have done, over billions of years. The second scenario is that of cross-contamination. Both of them deserve further explanations.
If life developed on Mars, then it may have had sufficient time to develop before the planet became inhospitable, lost all of its liquid water, and became the barren wasteland it is today. If so, then bacteria and microbes would have endured in extreme conditions, due to their ability to adapt.
If lifeforms arrived at the Red Planet aboard meteorites that separated from Earth millions of years ago, then the organisms that survived the long journey through space – which recent studies have shown to be entirely possible – would have already carried with them the ability to adapt to new environments.
In either case, the conclusion is that life can endure on the Red Planet. Operating under this assumption, the question then becomes what are the best possible locations to start with in the quest for extraterrestrial life.
In recent investigations conducted on Earth, near the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, scientists discovered bacteria living 100 feet (30 meters) inside a lava tube at Newberrt Crater. The tube is located at an altitude of 1,530 meters (5,020 feet), LiveScience reports.
A particular species of the common bacteria Pseudomonas puzzled scientists, says Portland State University microbiologist and astrobiologist Radu Popa, also the lead author of a new study detailing the findings. The work was published in the December 14 online issue of the journal Astrobiology.
The special type of Pseudomonas survives and thrives in near-freezing temperatures and very low-oxygen concentrations, conditions similar to what experts expect to encounter on the Martian surface, but especially inside lava tubes on the Red Planet.
These microorganisms feed on the iron in olivine, a common type of rock that is plentiful on both Earth and Mars. The discovery that olivine can provide the necessary support for microbial life was groundbreaking for science.
“We've been looking for the last 10 years for evidence that a microbe could live on olivine this way, and now we've found many such examples,” Popa explains.
“When temperatures and atmospheric pressure on Mars are higher, as they have been in the past, ecosystems based on this type of bacteria could flourish,” he concludes.