Buried Martian Ice Discovered: Clues into the 'Life on Mars' Mystery?

Earthling's obsession with the possibility of life on Mars dates back to the 19th century, when Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli believed that he observed long, narrow channels on the red planet. These crevasses were interpreted and popularized by author/astronomer Percival Lowell to be irrigation canals built by ancient civilizations of martians who were struggling to survive on a cooling, drying planet.

Of course modern science has since ruled out the possibility of intelligent civilizations existing on our planetary neighbor, yet the search for life on Mars is ongoing. Most astronomers agree that conditions for life on Mars were more suitable hundreds of millions of years ago. Thus NASA's primary goal for satellite and rover missions is to identify if liquid water existed on an ancient Mars.

With the release of Friday's issue of Science, there is now evidence of frozen water-ice buried beneath approximately ten meters of rocky Martian debris discovered, for the first time, outside of Mars' polar regions. Hundreds of these large glacier-like ice sheets, discovered by John Holt of University of Texas Austin and his colleagues using images collected from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, lie covered by dirt and rock in the middle latitudes of Mars. Climate studies of past ice ages support the notion that these ice caps formed when Mars may have tipped on its axis to expose these middle latitudes to much colder conditions, which would have allowed for such massive glaciers to form. But what can these buried water-ice formations tell us about life on Mars?

These glaciers likely hold atmospheric records of ancient Martian climate, which could reveal whether conditions were ever suitable for life on Mars. Perhaps more intriguing is the idea that if life existed as these ice sheets formed, there could be microbial fossils preserved in the ice. Some might even contend that life could thrive in these formations under current conditions. While all of these ideas are still speculative and require further investigation, the identification of these ice caps is great news for future human explorers, who could potentially use the frozen water as a hydrogen energy source or for drinking water. And there's a lot of it to go around. "Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles, and up to one-half mile thick, and there are many more," John Holt explained in a press release, attesting to the immensity of these ice formations.

A bit closer to home, NASA's Astrobiology Institute is leading an expedition this month into the "global warming hot-spots" of Bolivia and Chile, which serve as model systems for what conditions may have been like 3.5 billion years ago on Mars. Pictured on the right above, "the Atacama desert is the driest place on Earth," Kevin Rose, a University of Miami student/explorer explains,"By examining the most extreme environments on Earth, such as extremely high UV, low oxygen, low temperatures, and low pH, we can infer what life, if it existed, may have had to deal with on Mars."

With scientists working tirelessly on both sides of the interplanetary divide, the prospect of finding life on Mars is an increasingly exciting story to follow.

Photo source: www.current.com, & http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Chile/Atacama/blog-277669.html