As some of the planet’s leading scientists continue to furiously study what it’d take to sustain life on Mars, one new study says life may have already called the Red Planet home. In fact, the study—shared by the University of Arizona Wednesday—says if Martian life existed on the planet, it may have been wiped extinct because of climate change.
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Published in Nature Astronomy, the study claims the Fourth Rock From the Sun was likely much more hospitable some four billion years ago as it had a denser atmosphere than exists today. Because of that atmosphere, the water on the planet would have been able to freely flow, thus encouraging the growth of microbial life.
“We think Mars may have been a little cooler than Earth at the time, but not nearly as cold as it is now, with average temperatures hovering most likely above the freezing point of water,” study co-author Regis Ferrière said in a university press release. “While current Mars has been described as an ice cube covered in dust, we imagine early Mars as a rocky planet with a porous crust, soaked in liquid water that likely formed lakes and rivers, perhaps even seas or oceans.”
By replicating various models and experiments Ferrière and a group of researchers, the team determined the atmosphere of the planet changed very rapidly, meaning catastrophic results for any life that would have been lcoated on the planet.
“The problem these microbes would have then faced is that Mars’ atmosphere basically disappeared, completely thinned, so their energy source would have vanished and they would have had to find an alternate source of energy,” study co-author Boris Sauterey added. “In addition to that, the temperature would have dropped significantly, and they would have had to go much deeper into the crust. For the moment, it is very difficult to say how long Mars would have remained habitable.”
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