👾 Alien (s).
👽 Area 51.
🚀 Space Travel.
🍫 Mars.
🍫 Milky Way.
🍫 Maltesers (actually they are just Chocolate).
A lonely Astronaut reaches for home.
These are all just words we recognise from books and movies (you can include Maltesers as movie snacks) right? Well not anymore. NASA has uncovered evidence which suggests Mars once had a giant ocean spanning half its northern hemisphere. Some even say that 76% of the surface of mars may have been covered by water. And you know what loves an ocean, with its water supply and warmth? Tourists. But more importantly - Aliens.
But how do we know this?
Well what else are three of the most powerful infra-red telescopes in the world for if not to discover the potential of life on other planets? These feats of engineering made maps of the planet, studying its chemistry. This chemistry unveiled Martian ice caps with a substance which showed there used to be a great deal of water there - billions of years ago. Recent images indicate rivers once flowed on the surface of mars. But then the atmosphere thinned and the water was lost. Or perhaps exterrestrial life suddenly became really thirsty with all of their sunbathing. Also what do you define as life? Do you mean tiny microbes or sapient beings?
Two astronauts stare at a mushroom
whilst an Alien waves at them in the distance.
What does this mean?
Well the factors needed for life might have existed at some point in Mars' past but that's certainly not the case anymore. The loss of atmosphere due to its lack of a magnetic field is a large contributing factor to this. To prove that any life existed the current Nasa’s Perseverance Mars rover will need to bring home its rock samples safely.
We will never know for sure whether aliens spent their summer holidays at Mars. Or whether aliens are even real. If you want to have a go at the maths try the Drake equation. But with new discoveries every day and science taking us to such new extremes, it may be a real possibility for man to find itself a new best friend, or for them to become space tourists on the red planet.