Water on Mars - Clues to Life?

PHPee writes: "Reports of water on Mars say that huge amounts of water gushed through the surface of the red planet fairly 'recently'. (Recently being as little as 10 million years ago) This is big news, because it may lead to finding some simple forms of life on the planet. For more info, check out: (story #1) and (story #2)."

Comments

Alien bacteria

[Mattygfunk]

Wired is also covering the story.

Apart from being fastinating and a sign that further evolved life forms may exist, are there any potential advantages for finding extraterestrial bacteria?

Re:This may be a daft question, but......

[bdeclerc]

What are the Polar Ice caps on Mars made of if not water ?

The South Polar Ice Cap on Mars is almost completely CO2 Ice, and during the Southern Martian summer disappears almost entirely. The North Polar Ice Cap has a large "hood" of CO2-Ice in winter, which disappears in summer, leaving a three times smaller ice cap made of water ice (three times smaller is still bloody big, many hundreds of kilometers across and probable several kilometers thick).

Hi-resolution images of the fissure.

[Mortenson]

Here are a few images of the fissure courtesy of the Mars Global Surveyor:
here here here and here

No signs of life there, some say that these ones show life: "Banyan Trees", "Hot Spring??", "Leopard spots"

Personally, at this resolution, they could be anything, but they are still fun to look at.