The presence of water on a planet is a strong indicator that life also exists on that cosmic object. All life forms from Earth need water to survive, and there’s no clue that life could exist under other circumstances, As we all know that water can exist in three stages (liquid, solid, and gas), it has to be on the first one for contributing to the suitable environment for any life forms to develop themselves.
Except for Earth, the only planet from the solar system that’s theoretically capable of hosting any life forms is Mars. Scientists knew this long ago, and they’re even discovering new hints that are sustaining the apparently wild idea.
Is the Martian underground thriving with liquid water?
A recent research published in Nature Astronomy and led by Elena Pettinelli, an associate professor at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre in Rome, describes several newly detected subglacial water bodies located under the Martian surface, more precisely near the south pole.
But don’t rush and open the champagne just yet, as Cassie Stuurman, who’s a radar scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, declares:
Something interesting is happening here, but there’s a really high bar for proof when it comes to talking about liquid water on Mars,
To be really convincing, most scientists would want to see this corroborated by other lines of data and evidence,
Probably if there were any complex creatures living on our neighboring planet, astronomers would have known by now. The more plausible scenario is that some type of microbial life could be dwelling on Mars, and that’s one of the reasons why NASA wants to send a probe to the planet after the Artemis mission.
Scientists are pretty certain that Mars was once flooded with liquid water, more precisely billions of years ago. The Red Planet looked more like Earth rather than the desolated and red wasteland we all know today.
