News-Letter

Unmanned vehicles equipped with cameras and probes send back a wealth of previously unknown information about the Red Planet. [Click to enlarge]

Does life really exist on Mars? Scientists and astronomers across the world have been looking for signs of possible life forms on the Red Planet for many years. Although they have not been successful in this search, they discovered that Mars is the planet most likely to support life forms due to its similarities to Earth. For instance, the Red Planet has an atmosphere of its own to maintain a steady temperature and has polar caps that are thought to have abundant subsurface water.

Recent images taken from NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor are refueling the search for intelligent life on the planet among scientists thanks to a geologist from Arizona State University whose theory may help scientists and give them clues where to seek signs of possible life forms.

Philip Christensen claims that gullies in the middle latitudes of Mars depicted by scientific probes may represent recent existence of liquid water near its surface, which is important for providing a habitat for life. Scientists and astronomers had previously believed that water existed only around the polar caps in ice forms.

Christensen believes that these gullies were created from the melting of snow. Mars is unique among other planets in that its axis tilts by more than 20 degrees over the course of 100,000 to 1 million years - a process Christensen describes as "wobbling."

When the planet is tilted toward the sun, the sun's heat is received more intensely than usual. Subsurface water vaporizes from the polar regions and this water vapor turns into snow that eventually falls around the equator of Mars. When the tilting of the axis reaches its maximum, intense heat melts the snow and causes trickles of water to create the gullies on the surface.

This new theory suggests that liquid water was present near the surface of the planet, no more than a few thousand years ago. Other scientists believe that Mars has possibly been dry and cold for the more than 1 billion years.

Previous explanations for the gullies include water from springs or the melting of subsurface ice. Frozen carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was also thought to be responsible for the gullies.

Two additional robotic rovers are planned to leave for Mars this year, according to a recent press release. These rovers should be able to gather enough data to validate Christensen's theory.

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