Life on Mars

I recently read a CNN article stating that the Mars rover Curiosity had found some kind of mineral deposits present in a rock formation. The rover drilled into a rock sample that scientists believe was possibly once a lake bed. I am no scientist and won’t pretend to understand the chemistry behind the findings, but apparently this means that there was once water on Mars (check out the article found at the link below). This in turn suggests that Mars was once sustainable for organic life. NASA is in no way suggesting that there was once life on Mars, but that can’t stop us from speculating.  

What if there was once a race of beings living on Mars? Beings much like humans, but with differences in physical makeup, developed to sustain life in whatever weather and climate existed on the Red Planet.  It would obviously have to have been long ago, before Earthlings cultivated the ability to spy on their home. In fact, they would have had to have been completely wiped off of Mars by that time.

Depictions of extra-terrestrials in today’s entertainment industry are almost always of hostile and advanced creatures sent to Earth to take our planet. If life ever existed on Mars, they clearly didn’t come to our planet and try to seize it for their own. I imagine they would have been a peaceful race struggling with much the same things we do today. They could have been primitive creatures, living in caves and lean-to shelters, feeding from vegetation. I think they would have been far more advanced, however (otherwise, what fun is this exercise).

It boggles the mind to think that there could have been an unknown existence, another story of the evolution of a race of beings. It changes some perspective here on Earth, our perception of the progression of time. Discoveries, inventions, advancements that we made could have already been made on another planet, long before we even existed. That’s some Back to the Future type stuff. Heavy, as Doc Brown would say (I swear I don’t plan these BTTF references, they just keep surfacing).

It is possible that these creatures, let’s call them Marsians, for lack of a better term and to avoid repetition, had to deal with different circumstances than we did. Mars is obviously a different planet with a different climate now, but in my limited scientific opinion, I would imagine that life on a Mars that supported bodies of water would have looked a little like Earth. Rivers and lakes, vegetation that fed off of them, and probably stretches of desert sand and rock. Who knows what happened to the planet to transform it into its current state of barren, cold redness. NASA claims that radiation levels on Mars, taken by the rover Curiosity, are survivable for humans. So, one of my initial thoughts of an advanced Marsian race wiping themselves off the planet with nuclear weapons is probably shot.

Maybe they just used way too much hairspray and destroyed their environment, turning it from a plush life giving habitat, into what it is today. Over millions of years, the volatile weather patterns on its surface destroyed any clues of civilization left behind (let’s hope that’s not our future).

If NASA can’t figure it out, maybe we’ll never know what happened on Mars. But that unknown sure makes it more fun. It spawns incredible feats in scientific exploration, some entertaining film and television, and of course intriguing, Pulitzer Prize caliber blog posts.            

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CNN's NASA: Yes, Mars could have hosted life

NASA's All About Mars

Mars Radiation