French scientists said on Monday that ancient Mars may have had an environment capable of hosting an underworld filled with microscopic organisms.
The researchers conclude that if they had existed, these simple life forms would have altered the atmosphere so profoundly that they set off a Martian ice age and annihilate themselves.
The results offer a bleak view of the ways of the universe. Life – even simple life like microbes – “can in fact generally lead to one’s own death,” said the study’s lead author, Boris Souteri, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Sorbonne.
The results are “a little depressing, but I think it’s also very motivating,” he said in an email. “They challenge us to rethink the way the biosphere and its planets interact.” In a study published in Nature Astronomy, Soteri and his team say they used climate and soil models to assess the habitability of Mars’ crust about four billion years ago, when the Red Planet was thought to be filled with water. and much more favorable than that. today. .
Researchers speculate that hydrogen-eating methane-producing microbes could thrive beneath the surface at that time, with just a few inches (several tens of centimeters) of dirt, more than enough to protect them from the strong oncoming radiation.
According to Souteri, anywhere on Mars that is free of ice will swarm with these creatures, as was the case on early Earth.
Soteri said the alleged hot and humid climate of the early Martian climate would have been disrupted by the absorption of too much hydrogen from the thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere.
With temperatures dropping to nearly minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius), it’s possible that any object on or near the surface was buried much deeper in an attempt to survive.
Instead, the researchers say, Earth’s microbes may have helped maintain temperature conditions, given the nitrogen-dominated atmosphere.
SETI’s Kaveh Pahelvan said future models of the Martian climate need to be studied by French research.
Pahlivan recently conducted a separate study showing that Mars was born moist with warm oceans lasting millions of years. His team concluded that the atmosphere would be dense and composed mostly of hydrogen at that point, acting as a greenhouse gas that traps heat that was eventually transported to higher altitudes and lost to space.
Pahlifan said the French study investigated potential microbial climate effects when carbon dioxide dominated the Martian atmosphere, and thus did not apply to earlier times.
“What their study shows, however, is that if life (this) had existed on Mars” during this early period, he added in an email, “it would have had a significant impact on the prevailing climate.”
The best place to look for traces of this past life? French researchers propose Hellas Planita, or plains, and the unexplored Jezero Crater on the northwestern edge of Isidis Planita, where NASA investigations are currently collecting rocks to return to Earth within a decade.
Next on Sautere’s list of missions: researching the possibility of microbial life continuing deep inside Mars.
“Could Mars currently be inhabited by microscopic organisms descended from this primitive biosphere?” He said. “Then where?”
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is automatically created from a shared feed.)
