Ever since we learned the existence of the red planet centuries ago,
the thought of it bustling with alien beings has fascinated scientists and
the common public. Some imagined a land shaped by an intelligent civilization.
Others pictured dark swaths of vegetation, sentient plants and strange flora and fauna.
With the new NASA rovers, some of the most technologically sophisticated spacecrafts,
NASA aims to answer one of the oldest questions: Does life exist anywhere but Earth?
And what would even happen if we were to find evidence of live or ancient aliens?
The Mars of today is not a pleasant place,
at least not for life as we know it. It is cold and dry. With a dusty atmosphere
and no magnetic field. Its surface is constantly zapped by radiation.
But several billion years ago, Mars was likely warm and flourishing with water,
with ancient lakes and nutrient rich soil.
And perhaps, ancient life.
Today, not just NASA, but even private companies are invested in a trip to Mars.
Leading the charge is SpaceX, which aims to “put humans on Mars by the late 2030s.”,
and eventually to colonize the dead, red planet.
For scientists searching for extraterrestrial life, Mars provides plenty of hope.
Multiple observations over the years right from the viking to curiosity,
perseverance, indicate signs of life.
Are we alone? Possibly not. And the proof could be on our neighboring planet itself,
which could be a junction for aliens who are frequently spotted on earth.
The evidence speaks for itself.
Welcome to Lab three sixty, its time to explore.
In 1976, NASA's twin Viking landers touched down on Mars in an attempt to answer a weighty
question: Is there life on the Red Planet? Gilbert Levin was the principal investigator
of the Vikings' Labeled Release (LR) life-detection experiment. The instrument
got positive responses at both landing locales. In 1997, Levin concluded that the experiment had,
indeed, detected life on Mars — and he has championed that viewpoint ever since. Now,
more than four decades after the Viking landings — and with a lot more information about Mars in
hand — Levin believes that NASA hasn't properly followed up on the Viking landers' results.
"I am certain that NASA knows there is life on Mars," he said in a talk show recently.”
Geomicrobiologist Barry DiGregorio, a researcher, claims the space agency is
covering up aliens on Mars. Aliens that it found during its earlier missions.
He believes that the discovery may have been ignored because of
the agency’s plans for a manned mission to Mars.
Meanwhile NASA has described the shapes in images as rock crystals which are being analyzed.
DiGregorio, who specializes in study of microscopic life in earth’s soil,
says the patterns in images from the Curiosity rover are similar to Ordovician
trace fossils he photographed on earth, and are proof of soft bodied life forms.
But what about aliens on Mars?
Over the years, NASA has recorded vast amounts of footage of Mars,
from photographs to videos to live streams from rovers.
Well, a South African researcher has been combing through some of it and uncovered something very
peculiar in images from 2006 - what looks like a UFO that crashed on the Red Planet.
Jean Ward was going through footage taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter when he
discovered the odd sight at the bottom of the Candor Chasma, a large canyon in Mars'
Valles Marineris system, said to be the planet's equivalent of the Grand Canyon.
In fact, it is considered the largest known canyon in the solar system, and it,
Jean focused on what he called a "strange trench." At the end of the trench there is
"a perfect disc" that is "mostly covered in sand and debris, and behind it, we have random dunes."
Ward goes on to note, "It looks like a disc-shaped craft or object came in at a
very low angle and crashed into the surface of Mars leaving this strange behind it."
He then zooms in more on the disc-shaped object, which he surmises is 40-50 feet in diameter,
pointing out that that is about the same width as the trench behind it.
He adds, "It looks like a disc that's partially
elevated on one side as it plowed into the surface."
While some commenters wrote off the discovery as a sand dune or space junk, others felt it
was something much more significant, calling it a "great find" and writing things like,
"There is really nothing else it could be, other than a crashed saucer shaped object.
I know they are afraid of contamination but still, I wish NASA would investigate."
Another recent image from NASA's Curiosity rover of an unusual rock structure on Mars
sparked some conjecture about alien passageways on Mars.
The rocks on Mars are known for their unusual appearances. Ever since this
image was released to the general public, there’s been a lot of speculation asking what
might have caused a doorway-like passage to appear on the side of a Mars hill.
Curiosity's mast-mounted camera took the picture in a series of raw photographs.
A UFO fanatic, deciphered the image, which looks like an entrance to a secret underground tunnel,
by providing a broader look at the surrounding landscape.
This led the people to ask questions like, Is this the proof we’ve been
looking for our entire lives? Will we finally be able to see aliens?
But the Doorway turned out to be not a doorway at all. It’s just
a small crevice on a Martian hill that looks like an interdimensional passage.
Since Mars’ surface isn’t anything like the Earth, its images can be very tricky.
A strangely eroded rock can resemble a fish. A cliff with
backlighting can resemble the profile of a face.
Cropped images and zoomed-in views can magnify small details. If the shadows
were falling at a different angle, it would make the doorway very uninteresting.
The scientists at NASA emphasized on how small
the crevice actually is. It’s only about 30 by 45 cm wide.
While we can't be positive if Martians used little doorways,
NASA felt confident that the "door" in this case was simply a small rocky crevice.
This isn't meant to take away from the excitement
of discovering strangely shaped rocks and landscape characteristics on Mars.
The fact that we have wheeled robots roaming around in the Gale Crater,
transmitting back photographs from another planet, is arguably the most magical aspect.
Meanwhile, The very first Webb images of Mars revealed an unsettling terrain,
and a presence of life indicators like water, Co2 and carbon monoxide.
The Webb images revealed a region of the planet’s eastern hemisphere, including one of the Solar
System’s largest impact craters, and a lava flow from a volcano that is long extinct. Webb captured
the images with its Near InfraRed Camera, along with data from its Near InfraRed Spectrometer.
But the images’ most awe striking reveal is one of a giant crater on the eastern half of the planet.
One that is now known by the name of Hella’s Basin. Possibly the oldest and
largest impact craters in our solar system. About 4 billion years ago, something enormous
slammed into the young planet Mars, leaving behind a crater 1,400 miles wide and 4.4 miles deep,
just south of the planet’s equator. The crater, now known as Hella’s Basin, shows up in dark
orange in Webb’s first image of the eastern half of Mars — a cooler splotch against the brightness
of the rest of the daylit side of the planet, which glows bright yellow with radiating heat.
Shorter wavelengths of Webb’s infrared light,
revealed more minute details. You can see the northeastern edge of the Hella’s Basin,
along with another of Mars’ largest craters, the 290 miles wide Huygens Crater.
Once upon a time, water used to flow through the Huygens,
a steady stream that carved a branching network of channels into the rocky surface.
It was NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, that also spotted clay and carbonate minerals,
both of which only form in wet environments, exposed by a smaller impact crater inside Huygens.
James Webb’s NIRSpec instrument also measured the spectrum of infrared light coming from the
planet. To put it simply, NIRSpec sorted Mars’ light into individual wavelengths,
one that corresponds to specific chemicals on the surface and in the atmosphere of Mars.
The “dips” in this graph show the wavelengths where molecules in Mars’ atmosphere absorb
light…these wavelengths reveal the presence of water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide.
It’s tempting to think of Mars as an easy target for Webb,
when compared to distant galaxies from light years away, but it’s actually not.
For Webb, Mars is so close, and so bright, that its quite hard to look at. Imagine looking at your
phone while holding it just in front of your eyes, that’s what its like for Webb to look at Mars.
And yet, it has done a commendable job, furthering our understanding of the planet and its history.
Whether all these images and data of Mars’ surface and atmosphere do reveal
the presence of ancient alien life, is not for certain. It will require
a lot more study and missions before we arrive at a definite conclusion.
What do you guys have to say? Drop in your comments below and don’t forget
to subscribe to Lab three sixty, because together, we will explore.