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Life Possible On 'Large Regions' of Mars

Posted by samzenpus on from the quato-approved dept.

astroengine writes "Australian scientists who modeled conditions on Mars to examine how much of the Red Planet was habitable have said that 'large regions' could sustain life. Using decades of global data, the researchers have evaluated the entire planet, and found that 3 percent of the Martian volume could sustain Earth-like microbial life. As a comparison, only one percent of the volume of Earth contains life. However, the only habitable regions are below the Martian surface where the temperature and pressure could sustain liquid water."

3 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Original article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    The paper can be found here.

    The slant they're putting on it is slightly different. They've noted that in a large proportion of areas on Earth where there is liquid water there isn't necessarily life, so simply searching for liquid water in space isn't necessarily the best way to go about looking for other life or places which would be habitable: you need to bear in mind other factors as well if you want to narrow it down.

    Terrestrial life is known to require liquid water, but not all terrestrial water is inhabited. Thus, liquid water is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for life...If the known limits of terrestrial life do not change significantly, these limits represent important constraints on our biosphere and, potentially, on others, since ~4 billion years of evolution have not allowed life to adapt to a large fraction of the volume of Earth where liquid water exists

  2. Re:So it's time to drill? by loufoque · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's nothing compared to the amount of russian cosmonauts who died, or probably also the unknown amount of chinese ones.

  3. Re:A few kilometers. by mosb1000 · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are several types of drill rigs that do not require a working fluid. Probably the best one for this application is a cable tool rig which drops a bit suspend by a cable to break up the rock, and then a bailer to remove the broken rock. This is a very slow process, but depths of 3.7 km have been achieved with it and it doesn't require a drilling fluid so I think it could get the job done.