Evidence of an underground reservoir is an obvious destination to look for life on the Red Planet
The writer is a science commentator Another piece of the Martian puzzle is slotting into place. The surface of the Red Planet is laced with grooves and channels, long seen as souvenirs of an ancient watery past. Now there is evidence that our planetary neighbour, already known to have ice at the poles, harbours liquid water beneath its surface. On Monday, researchers in the US revealed they had seen seismic signals indicating a water reservoir buried deep below the crust.
There is water ice at the poles and traces of water vapour in the atmosphere but that is not regarded as enough to account for what once flowed. One theory is that the liquid water disappeared when Mars lost its atmosphere around three billion years ago. This latest finding suggests at least some percolated down into the crust. It is not far-fetched to imagine this watery underground kingdom of cracks and crevices hosting a form of microbial life, akin to the “extremophiles” found on Earth.
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