• Question: What would you do if you found life on Mars? Have you already found life?

    Asked by Ellen on 20 Jan 2020. This question was also asked by TUnknownT.
    • Photo: John Bridges

      John Bridges answered on 20 Jan 2020:


      Dear Ellen

      We haven’t found life on Mars yet. Probably our strongest chance will be to identify chemical signs of ancient life in sediments such as at Oxia Planum or Jezero Crater (Mars2020 landing site from which we hope to bring samples back to Earth by 2032).
      If we found clear evidence, I would want to reflect on what this means for life in the Universe.
      Professor John Bridges

    • Photo: Abbie Hutty

      Abbie Hutty answered on 20 Feb 2020:


      I like to think that if we find life on Mars, and answer that fundamental question of “are we alone in the universe” it would make us think a bit differently about our place in the universe, and what we are doing to our planet, and who we want to be as a race. That’s maybe a bit too hopeful though, as a lot of people only think about themselves and what they own and what people think of them! Maybe at some level, though, finding out that aliens exist and are out there will make us take a bit more accountability for our actions on our planet and the impact we are having.

      We haven’t found conclusive evidence for it yet, but I think there will be life in other places in the Universe. Just on the basis of how enormous the universe is, and how many other stars and planets exist. While we humans like to think that we are special and unique I personally think it is unlikely that we’re that special, and think that life will have evolved in other places just the same.

      Even if it hadn’t evolved elsewhere, it is very possible that it has spread elsewhere, just through things like meteor impacts blasting chunks of rock from one planet that has life, that land on others. We regularly find chunks of Mars rock on Earth, and we know that Earth rock has landed on Mars, so life could very well have been taken along for the ride. We could in fact all have evolved from life that started on Mars – we could be Martians!

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