Incredible signs of life on Mars!

 in 1971 david bowie asked  is there life on mars in his hit song of  the same name  the possibility of life on mars is of  huge interest to scientists  and they have been speculating about  life on mars since the mid 17th century  so is there any evidence for life on  mars or  is it all speculation conspiracy theory  and confirmation bias  welcome to fact nominal in today's article  looking for aliens in incredible signs  of life  on mars early speculation  the first period of speculation about  life on mars came after the discovery of  its polar ice caps in the mid 17th  century  this was an important discovery as it  suggests the possibility of water on  mars  which would become important for later  research on the possibility of living  organisms  water is a precursor to life on any  planet so if the early scientists could  find water on mars  it could suggest the existence of life  on mars  in 1854 william hewlett theorized that  mars had seas  land and possibly life forms but early  speculation of life on mars  didn't take off until the late 1800s  when telescopes observed apparent  martian canals  a network of long straight lines in the  equatorial regions of the planet  this was later disproved as an optical  illusion caused by the low resolution of  the telescopes of the time  and a translation error they really  dropped the ball on this theory  the early scientists studying mars would  have had their fun speculating about  life on mars until  1894 when william wallace campbell  definitively proved there is no water or  oxygen currently on mars killjoy  astrobiology 101 mars has become the  most exciting frontier for astrobiology  a relatively new field of study  developing at the crossroads of  astronomy  biology geology paleontology physics and  chemistry  its key goals include contributing to  the understanding of what makes a  habitable planet  and studying the origin and evolution of  life on earth and other planets  so what has the field of astrobiology  discovered about life on mars in the  past and present signs of past life  let's start with the past was there life  on mars at some point  recent models have shown that mars was  colder than the earth has ever been  despite this local warming of the  environment by volcanism and  impacts sporadically warm the  environment and it is likely that water  flowed on the surface of mars  sometime in the neyoshin period this  proves that the conditions for life on  mars  existed in trace amounts around 4 100  million years ago  so it's safe to say that any life  existed there would be long gone  unless these conditions could somehow  produce immortal lovecraftian beings  surface habitability degraded  significantly during the mid-hesperian  period  due to a loss of early atmosphere and  the magnetic field  the temperatures greatly decreased and  all the water on mars was trapped in  permafrost or transported to the poles  soil and rock samples crafted by the  curiosity rover in 2013  brought additional information on  numerous habitability factors  the rover identified some of the key  ingredients for life in the soil  including sulfur nitrogen hydrogen  oxygen  phosphorus and possibly carbon as well  as clay minerals  oh yeah turns out that that wallace  campbell guy was wrong  there are currently trace amounts of  oxygen and water vapor in the atmosphere  yay so the confirmation of liquid water  flowing on mars  the existence of soil nutrients and the  previous discovery of a protective  magnetic field  strongly suggests that mars could have  supported life on the planet  it would have only been microbial tiny  little cells that float around in fluids  but  hey it's something conspiracy theories  now let's go on a little tangent and  talk about bigfoot  trust me this is relevant yeah it turns  out we were looking in the wrong place  all along  turns out he was on mars all along in  2014  a picture was sent back by the mars  rover depicting what looked like  bigfoot this got the tinfoil hat wearers  very excited  with many articles written on dodgy  websites claiming that bigfoot indeed  lives on mars  now of course it's probably a pile of  rocks but you never know  bigfoot might be a fan of summer  vacations to mars  conspiracy theorists got even more riled  up upon the discovery of  ancient engravings on mars around the  same time as the bigfoot photo  pictures of rocks were released that  were rumored to be engraven by aliens  small lines on these rocks were made out  to be carvings of stick figures  as pointed out by youtuber ufo vni 2012  the most trustworthy scientific source  on the website  moving on to another dud theory the face  of mars was a myth developed in the  1970s  after a high resolution image came out  in the 70s of a martian mountain  this image of a mountain kind of looks  like a face so naturally it launched a  thousand books blogs and documentaries  along with this came speculation of  pyramids on mars  i mean hey if the aliens apparently  built them on earth and why not mars  the face of mars myth was likely caused  by a psychological phenomenon called  paradolia when the human brain sees  familiar shapes and objects where there  are none  but this is getting into some vsauce  territory so i'll move on  sites for future exploration the last  hope for finding any evolved life on  mars  would be to access the martian  subsurface where habitable environments  may exist  but that won't be possible until we send  some humans over  so we'll let elon musk handle that one  however there have been some discoveries  that suggest  liquid water may still exist on mars the  most promising of these came in june of  2000  when possible evidence for liquid water  was found in the form of floodlight  gullies  further images were taken in 2006  suggesting the same thing  however there is disagreement in the  scientific community as to whether or  not the recent streaks were formed by  liquid water  some scientists suggest the flows were  just dry sand flows  in july 2018 scientists discovered a  subglacial lake below the southern polar  ice cap  the first known stable body of water on  the planet it wouldn't be much fun to  swim in this lake  but there may be some microbes swimming  around in there so hey  we can hope in may 2007 the spirit rover  disturbed a patch of ground with one of  its wheels  uncovering an area 90 rich in silica  you might recognize the word silica from  those little packets you find in food  packets  silica is used in these packets to  absorb moisture but  some idiots try eating them anyway back  to mars  the silica patch is reminiscent of the  effect of hot spring water or steam  coming into contact with volcanic rocks  scientists think this may be evidence of  a favorable environment for microbial  life in the past  they theorize that one possible origin  for the silica  may be the interaction of soil with acid  vapors produced by volcanoes  for these reasons silica deposits will  become important targets in the  exploration for fossil evidence of  ancient martian life  meaning we will dig into these deposits  and maybe find some microscopic worms  underground  or something thrilling in may of 2017  fossil evidence of early life was  discovered by australian scientists  at the university of new south wales  this came in the form of 3.48 billion  year old hot spring deposits in western  australia  professor van cranendonk director of the  australian center for astrobiology  claims  this shows a diverse variety of life  existed in fresh water  on land very early in earth's history  this has promising implications for  research into life on mars  professor crenendong continued saying  the pilbara deposits are the same age as  much of the crust of mars  which makes hot spring deposits on the  red planet an exciting target for our  quest  to find fossilized life there it  suggests that hot springs may be the  best place to look for signs of life on  mars  in fact it implies that life on earth  originated in freshwater hot springs on  land  rather than in the ocean so nasa may  send a rover to an area of mars with  fossilized hot springs  in the near future to understand the  true significance of the discovery of  these hot springs we have to understand  bio signatures which would be well  preserved in these hot spring  environments  a biosignature is any substance or  phenomenon that provides  scientific evidence for past or present  light the most promising of these  that may be discovered in the near  future are methane  formaldehyde microscopic morphological  features found in meteorites  and ignope-fossil-like structures while  we are on the subject of promising sites  for explorations  let's discuss geysers geysers are  exploding holes in the ground  that while awesome mainly expel plain  old co2  they have been observed on mars and have  been theorized to contain colonies of  photosynthetic martian microorganism  upcoming rover exploration however the  most recent nasa rover the perseverance  rover and the ingenuity helicopter drone  is planned to land on the gizero crater  on the 18th of february 2021  it will investigate an astrobiologically  relevant ancient environment on mars and  investigate its surface geological  processes and history  this makes it our best bet for  investigating the past and present  possibilities of life on mars  it will cash sample containers along its  route for retrieval by a potential  future mars sample return mission  in addition to these nasal-led missions  the united arab emirates have launched  their hope orbiter  and china has launched the tianwen1 with  an orbiter  lander and rover these missions are also  set to reach mars in february of 2021  this means the most exciting discoveries  related to life on mars  may be yet to come but come on can we  not afford to launch a mission to find  big first  he could be out there