Is There Life on Mars?

IS THERE LIFE ON MARS?

If you have a chance to go to a country side where you may have a clear view of the sky at night, you probably will discover a red star. That is probably Mars. With its bright and reddish color, Mars stands out for and easily noticed since the ancient times (Discovery). In 1877, astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli discovered several crisscrossing lines on Mars that he believed to be the canals of water (Discovery). Go along with the hypothesis that life existed on Mars, several processes has been made to prove hypothesis. However, is there really lives on Mars or people are just wasting their times and money to prove the thing that never exists?

Mars is a one of five planets that can be seen from Earth without using a binocular or a telescope. With that, it is well-known in every culture since long time ago. The official name for it "Mars" is adopted by the Roman, in honoring of their god of war; MARS because the reddish color remind everyone of blood and death (Discovery). It is also known as the "Red Planet" due to its reddish appearance from observation on Earth (Mars-Wikipedia).

With the effects of fictions and media like the movie War of the Worlds of H.G Wells that emphasizes on the existence of the Martians, another kind of intelligent creatures other than Earthman (Mars-Wikipedia). That creates more attention to Mars from people more than any other planets.

Living on Earth, an environment which you can find "life" exist everywhere you go, every step you put on the ground, every times you breath, there are millions of micro-living-form. It probably difficult for us to have clear understanding that not every other environment be suitable for life to exist, at least at the definition standards of how we, human, define: life. According to Shostak in his article, there are three requirements for life to exist: there must be raw materials, solvent, (water is considered as a priority choice), energy to drive the whole system to work (Shostak). Let apply this to the environment of planet Earth. We have raw materials: rock, coal, phosphor, sulfur, etc. This is necessary for the plant to develop on soil. Water is also another excess substance on our planet. We have enough water to keep all creatures alive. Plant, the base for all complex creatures to exist or other animals is both depend on water to transport substances inside its bodies. Don't forget that the Earth also receive large amount energy from the Sun everyday. That amount of energy helps the plant to transform carbon dioxide into oxygen for all creatures to use. Earth has all of the requirements, and the result is we have life on Earth.

Is Mars all qualified for this logic? If the answer is yes, life can be concluded to be existed on that blood-color planet. For the raw material requirement, it is probably not a problem on a rocky planet like Mars. The handful of elements necessary for life is available just about everywhere. The latter two requirements are coupled, since energy is necessary to keep fluid liquefied (Shostak). Mars is closer to the Sun than Earth, there is no reason that it is not receive enough energy for life to get working. However, there is one point that scientist has not discovered is if water or any kind of solvent exists on that dry planet.

By the mid 19th century, astronomers have known that Mars had certain similarities to Earth (Mars Wikipedia). One is both Earths and Mars have the same day's length (Mars Wikipedia). In addition, Mars' axial tilt was similar to Earth's, the length of each seasons on Mars compare to its year is in perspective as the lengths of season on Earth to Earth's year (Mars Wikipedia). Before human made any exploration to Mars, there was hope with the observations of periodic variations in light and dark patches, particularly in the polar latitudes, and long dark striations that could perhaps even be irrigation channels of liquid water. These observations led to the increase in speculation that the darker features were water, and brighter ones were land (Mars Wikipedia). It was therefore logical for anyone to assume that there is life on Mars just like Earth.

Size comparison of terrestrial planets (left to right):

Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars

As the second closest planet to Earth after the Moon, Mars is the target of several explorations of human in space traveling. Several attempts have been made by NASA, the world's leader of any space program and aerospace research since the year 1960 (NASA). Sadly, most of them ended up as terrible failures. Until 1964, the Marine 4 spacecraft has finally reached Mars and transmitted to Earth with the first 21 images of Mars (Hamilton). Mariner 4 gave scientists their first glimpse of Mars at close range. However, these images only covered about 1% of the Mars' total surface. It has given out close up images of this Red Planet (Hamilton). These pictures indicated that Mars is nothing but a vast, barren wasteland of craters strewn about a rust-colored carpet of sand, without rivers, ocean or any kind of life (Hamilton). The evidences proved that the canals-looking line observed by Giovanni Schiaparelli is just an optical illusion (Hamilton).

Mars' northern ice cap.

In 1971, Mariner 9 visited Mars and sent back images of enormous volcanoes and canyons. It discovered Olympus Mons, the highest mountain in the solar system (Mars Wikipedia). The spacecraft also found evidence that water once flowed on Mars. However, there were still no sightings of Schiaparelli's famous canals (Life). There is evidence that liquid water existed at one time on the surface of Mars. The evidence for this includes the detection of various minerals such as hematite and goethite which usually only form in the presence of water (Mars Wikipedia). Also, since Mars has two large region of polar ice caps, people thinks that that can be the source of water. However, not every composition of ice is the same. On Earth, polar ice caps are mainly water ice, while on Mars; it is only mixture of carbon dioxide ice sublimes in summer and forms again to solid form in winter (Life). The transformation does not result to water.

Idea about the existence of water on Mars is crucial to decide about the existence of life on the Red Planet. The mission of the Mars Exploration Rovers of 2004, organized by NASA, was not to look for present or past life, but for evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars in the past (Life).