More of Mars is habitable than earth, say scientists
Earth-like microbes could survive in large parts of the Red Planet, according to study
AUSTRALIAN scientists have come to the startling conclusion that more of Mars is habitable than earth - for the right kind of creature.
A team from the Australian National University compared pressure and temperature to see how much of the entire volume of the two planets was hospitable to earth-like microbes. They found that three per cent of Mars - from its core to its upper atmosphere - was habitable. The same criteria applied to earth found only one per cent of the planet's entire volume to be habitable.
Charley Lineweaver, an astrobiologist with ANU, told AFP: "What we tried to do, simply, was take almost all of the information we could and put it together and say 'Is the big picture consistent with there being life on Mars?'
"And the simple answer is yes. There are large regions of Mars that are compatible with terrestrial life."
In a paper described as "the best estimate yet published of how habitable Mars is to terrestrial microbes" and published in the journal Astrobiology, the scientists point out that the parts of Mars that are hospitable to life are nearly all underground. On the surface of the Red Planet, the average temperature is -63C, and water can only exist as ice or vapour.
Underground, however, the higher pressure might allow water to exist in liquid form - essential for earth-like organisms. Heat from the planet's core would make it even more hospitable to microbes.
Nasa's Curiosity rover is on its way to Mars and is expected to land there in the huge Gale Crater in August 2012. The rocks here were once buried deep and although they have been exposed for a long time, Curiosity should be able to use its drill to examine "at least the edges" of what might have been habitable Martian soil before the crater formed, says Lineweaver. ·
