Life on Mars could be present beneath its surface
Thanks to probes that explore Mars, researchers show that life could flourish in liquid water lakes beneath the surface.
As recent research has suggested, water with a high salt content may remain liquid near the surface. But then, could there be life? In the study just published in Nature Geoscience, the planetologist Vlada Stamenković and his team believe that a microbial life.
Thanks to the molecular oxygen (O2) dissolved in these pockets of water, life would be possible. Molecular oxygen would come from the Martian atmosphere. Authors estimated that O2 could be found everywhere but since the oxygen concentrations are higher at low temperature, it would be in the polar regions that the rate would be the highest.
“No one thought of Mars as a place where aerobic respiration would work because there is very little oxygen in the atmosphere. It is possible that this planet so different from Earth could have given a chance to an aerobic life.”
This research is still a “theory”… But that makes us want to pay attention to the basement of Mars.
