John Priscu knows that microbes can live in the toughest environments, including two miles below the Antarctic ice in one of the coldest, deepest and darkest points on Earth. If life can thrive down there, Priscu believes, then chances are good that it can also thrive on the dry, cold surface of Mars. Priscu's ongoing study of the Vostok ice in Antarctica has earned him a spot on a National Research Council that is looking for ways to prevent the contamination of Mars due to human exploration.

Bookies Stop Taking Bets on Life on Mars

The information coming in from the Mars rovers is exciting for NASA, but it's ending some of the action for bookies in Britain. The bookmaking firm Ladbrokes announced it's stopped taking bets on the question of whether there was ever life on Mars.

If the very high sulfur content found at the Opportunity landing site points to its aqueous history, then what speculative biology could take advantage of brewing sulfur with water. According to one Mars' veteran, there are fascinating extreme microbes that can make good use of these chemical combinations.

NASA scientists said Tuesday that the roving robot Opportunity has found evidence that water once soaked the planet Mars. Liquid water is the one absolute requirement for life on Earth. Although the discovery does not mean the evidence of life on Mars has been found, it suggests that life could have evolved there at one point just as it did on Earth.

Rover Finds Mars Was Wet Enough for Life

Mars rover Opportunity has found evidence that the Red Planet was once wet enough for life to exist there, but the robot has not found any direct traces of living organisms, NASA scientists announced Tuesday. "Opportunity has landed in an area of Mars where liquid water once drenched the surface," said Edward Weiler, associate NASA administrator for space science, at a news conference. "This area would have been a good, habitable environment."

Big news from Mars

After a weekend of escalating buzz, NASA has scheduled a rush news conference at 2 p.m. ET Tuesday at its Washington headquarters to announce dramatic new findings about water on Mars. The specifics are being held back for the briefing, but clearly they have to do with evidence sent back from the Mars rovers relating to the role liquid water played — and may still be playing — on the Red Planet. If there is even a bit of salty liquid water beneath the surface of Mars, as hinted last month, that theoretically could open the way for life to exist there even today.

Mars: A Water World? Evidence Mounts, But Scientists Remain Tight-Lipped

Evidence that suggests Mars was once a water-rich world is mounting as scientists scrutinize data from the Mars Exploration rover, Opportunity, busily at work in a small crater at Meridiani Planum. That information may well be leading to a biological bombshell of a finding that the red planet has been, and could well be now, an extraterrestrial home for life. There is a palpable buzz here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California that something wonderful is about to happen in the exploration of Mars.

A saddleback ridge and two gentle peaks the color of rust rise from a rough, rock-strewn plain. The soil is a powder dotted with gray and salmon pebbles. Every footfall raises tiny puffs of dust and leaves a sharp-edged track. The piercing blue sky extends in an unbroken arc; the wind howls and tastes of salt. Everywhere I look is utter desolation, without a trace of any living thing - just stone, sand, and sky. It could be a picture from Spirit, Pathfinder, or Viking. It could be Mars. Indeed, that's why a couple dozen scientists are now scattered across the hillside.

ESA prepares mission to search for life on Mars

Before humans can leave their boot prints on the dusty surface of Mars, many questions have to be answered and many problems solved. One of the most fundamental questions – one that has intrigued humankind for centuries – is whether life has ever existed on Mars, the most Earthlike of all the planets.

As NASA’s rovers journey across Mars’s surface and new satellites orbit the planet, a wealth of information on the red planet is now available to the public, said astronomer and author Kenneth Croswell. Croswell spoke at this semester’s first installment of Saturday Morning Physics, a lecture series hosted by the University’s Physics Department. More than 350 people filled two auditoriums in the Dennison Building for the talk — a typical turnout for Saturday Morning Physics, said coordinator and physics Prof. Timothy McKay. Croswell presented material from his new book, “Magnificent Mars.”

Reality Check: Spheres on Mars Not Fossils

Mars has a long history of being misinterpreted, from conjurings of apparent canals that signaled an alien civilization to the infamous NASA photo of a supposed giant face. Now a close-up picture of tiny spheres embedded in a Martian rock has some people seeing fossilized life. This alternate, perhaps hopeful view of a picture taken by NASA's Opportunity Rover and released Monday has been expressed in e-mail messages to reporters and geologists. Mission scientists anticipated it and were ready yesterday with a response.

Andrew Knoll is a member of the Mars Exploration Rover science team and Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard University. His research focuses on ancient rocks on Earth; he studies how well they preserve evidence of ancient terrestrial life. Shortly after Opportunity landed on Mars, Astrobiology Magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Henry Bortman, spoke with Knoll about the scientific potential of the Opportunity landing site. In this interview segment, Knoll discusses how iron deposits near the Rio Tinto in Spain could help scientists understand the history of the hematite deposits on Mars. In the second segment, Knoll will discuss the possibility that Opportunity could find signs of life.

In the first triumph of a field dubbed "environmental genomics," scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with the Joint Genome Institute, have for the first time sequenced the genomes of the most abundant members of a community of organisms - not one at a time, but simultaneously. The researchers took a simple community of microbes from a pink slick on the floor of an abandoned mine, ground them up, and shotgun sequenced the lot. As they put the pieces of DNA back together, the snippets fell easily into five distinct genomes, four of them unknown until now.

As the first explorers pushed into the interior of the New World, they found native populations reeling from diseases never seen in the Americas. The bugs got there first. Leapfrogging ahead of the Europeans, the microbes carrying smallpox, measles and other diseases had decimated communities that had no natural immunity to them. Now, on a more distant new world, the bugs have done it again -- across 50 million miles of interplanetary space. Decades will pass before the first humans set foot on Mars. But they won't be the first Earthlings to land there.

Little green men, or microscopic blobs? For centuries, the prospect of life on Mars has brought the most lethargic imaginations to the boil, and driven scientists to a frenzy of speculation. But a team of University of Toronto physicists, working with other Canadian and American experts, hopes its landmark research mission will be among the first to answer the interplanetary riddle, and deliver new information that will pave the way for the great race to the Red Planet.

U.N. Wants Rules for Bioprospecting in Antarctica

The United Nations said on Sunday rules were needed to prevent a free-for-all search for unique Antarctic organisms that can be used for pharmaceutical and other commercial purposes. "Bioprospectors are starting to turn their attention to many of the world's last frontiers, such as hydrothermal vents, the deep seabed, the water column of the high seas and polar ice caps," said a report by UN University, headquartered in Tokyo.

The Martians are not coming - they've probably already arrived on earth. And we could be their descendants. Two Australian scientists have developed new technology to confirm claims by NASA that a meteorite from Mars found in Antarctica in 1984 contained microscopic fossils from the red planet. Biophysicist Dr Tony Taylor from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in Sydney and the University of Queensland's Professor John Barry devised a new technique which they say affirms the Martian microbe theory "beyond reasonable doubt".

The American space agency NASA has been accused of doctoring its pictures of Mars to make the Martian surface conform to our impression of the Red Planet. NASA, it is claimed, digitally "tweaked" drab brown scenery to make it redder, and removed green patches to hide evidence of life. Most of the pictures have been taken through green, blue and infra-red filters instead of green, blue and standard red filters, which would have produced more accurate colours. The infra-red filters over-emphasised the redness of the planet, turning blue objects a deep burgundy red or, in some cases, a hot pink, while greens appeared a dirty mustard yellow.

Life on Mars probably existed before life started on Earth. Scientists say a new analysis of a meteorite that plummeted to Antarctica in 1984 has confirmed NASA's theory that life once existed on Mars. In 1996, NASA announced it had found microscopic fossils of primitive bacteria-like organisms in meteorite ALH84001 that landed in Antarctica. Scientists have debated NASA's findings and whether the organisms were biological or Martian.

Australian scientists claim to have conclusive proof that unusual microscopic fossils found in a four billion-year-old meteorite from Antarctica are bacterial life from Mars. And in an extraordinary piece of research to be published today, they claim that the find makes it probable that life on Earth first began on Mars.

The answer to one of the most profound questions confronting humanity might have been found in the murky depths of a water trap at a bayside golf course. Great philosophers have spent millennia knitting their brows about whether we are alone in the universe. It now seems they should have been looking at hole nine of the Howestern golf course in Birkdale. Former University of Queensland microbiologist Tony Taylor revealed yesterday he had uncovered cast-iron (or should that be five iron) evidence that magnetic crystals found inside a Martian meteorite matched those in bacteria.

History may record that a dog named Tamarind helped confirm there was once life on Mars. While five space probes - including two robot rovers - explore the red planet, a Sydney scientist's pet dingo-kelpie cross may have found the evidence so many have been seeking.

The American space agency NASA has been accused of doctoring its pictures of Mars to make the Martian surface conform to our impression of the famously red planet. Nasa has been accused of digitally "tweaking" drab brown scenery to make it redder. It has even been suggested that Nasa removed green patches to hide evidence of life.

Among those primordial elements critical for life, water has been considered the one in short supply on Mars. But even as scientists adopt the theme to 'follow the water', another element, geothermal heat, may offer interesting exploration opportunities. Astrobiology Magazine interviewed Buffalo volcanologist, Tracy Gregg, about landing on a martian volcano.

It may only be a thin blue line on the red planet, but it is set to spark a debate about life as we know it. The European Space Agency's unmanned spacecraft Mars Express has discovered evidence of frozen water at the planet's south pole, backing NASA findings made in 2002. If the planet does hold water, the possibility of extraterrestrial life, past or present, may also become more than just science fiction.

Pictures from Nasa’s roving Mars buggy have astonished scientists by indicating that it may have landed in mud. Strange marks near the Spirit rover’s landing site suggest that against all the odds there be might liquid water on or just beneath the surface of Mars. The water would have to be very salty to avoid freezing or evaporating in the harsh Martian conditions. If the scientists’ suspicions are confirmed it would be the clearest sign yet that lakes and oceans once existed on Mars, and greatly increase the chances of life.

Mystery at Gusev Crater

Scientists are puzzled about a patch of soil near the Mars rover Spirit lander that they now call "Magic Carpet". The intrigue has been stirred up by how soil behaved when the lander’s airbags scraped across the martian soil. That soil appears to have been peeled away. This odd performance of the soil, some speculate, could provide a window into the existence of subsurface water and, maybe, clues about whether Mars could sustain life.

A team of scientists from LSU, NASA, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and other research organizations has discovered an area of Earth that is shockingly similar to the surface of Mars. This joint research effort has discovered clues from one of Earth's driest deserts about the limits of life on this planet, and why past missions to Mars may have failed to detect life. The results of the group's study were published this week in Science magazine, in an article titled "Mars-like Soils in the Atacama Desert, Chile, and the Dry Limit of Microbial Life."

As NASA prepares to set twin robots loose on the Martian surface and makes plans to send another in 2007, the agency's long term goal is clear: Determine whether the red planet does or ever did harbor life. But the current search for life is necessarily limited to life as we know it, organisms dependent on liquid water. A SPACE.com reader recently suggested that "we as humans are arrogant, simply believing that any other form of life will be just like us."

A team of scientists has discovered bacteria in a hole drilled more than 4,000 feet deep in volcanic rock on the island of Hawaii near Hilo, in an environment they say could be analogous to conditions on Mars and other planets. Bacteria are being discovered in some of Earth's most inhospitable places, from miles below the ocean's surface to deep within Arctic glaciers. The latest discovery is one of the deepest drill holes in which scientists have discovered living organisms encased within volcanic rock, said Martin R. Fisk, a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University.

A team of scientists has discovered bacteria in a hole drilled more than 4,000 feet deep in volcanic rock on the island of Hawaii near Hilo, in an environment they say could be analogous to conditions on Mars and other planets. Bacteria are being discovered in some of Earth's most inhospitable places, from miles below the ocean's surface to deep within Arctic glaciers. The latest discovery is one of the deepest drill holes in which scientists have discovered living organisms encased within volcanic rock, said Martin R. Fisk, a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. Results of the study were published in the December issue of Geochemistry, Geophysics and Geosystems, a journal published by the American Geophysical Union and the Geochemical Society.

The possibility of aliens being found on Mars is now 100 times more likely than Wolves winning the Premiership, according to odds from a leading bookmaker. Space probe Beagle 2's attempted landing on Mars has sparked a rush of interest in extraterrestrial life bets, William Hill confirms. The company has cut the odds that proof of the current existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life will be confirmed before the end of 2004 from 500-1 to 100-1.

Mars passed closer to Earth this summer than it had in thousands of years, and now three emissaries from Earth are about to repay the neighborliness — and then some. They are set to descend on the planet, and stay. The three visiting spacecraft, two of them carrying robotic roving vehicles, will be searching the Martian surface for signs of life or conditions conducive to life, at least in the distant past. Their quest is the latest scientific response to an abiding human fascination about the world next-door, a place cold and arid but sufficiently Earthlike to inspire visions of extraterrestrial life.

Bookmakers today cut the odds on Beagle 2 finding signs of life on Mars. The odds were cut by Ladbrokes from 33-1 to 25-1 after a number of bets were placed as the British probe neared its Christmas Day landing. Ladbrokes spokesman Warren Lush said: “These odds obviously don’t represent the true odds on finding life on Mars but we have shortened our price from 33-1 to 25-1 because we have liabilities of hundreds of thousands of pounds on the bet. “We first took money for life on Mars back in 1969 and would be looking at a black hole in our accounts if the Beagle mission discovers something.”

Assault on Mars nears its climax

The prospect of life on Mars has charged the public imagination for more than a century, ever since astronomers first spied what they thought were canals dug to irrigate the planet’s ruddy surface. But after spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes began taking a closer look at the planet, evidence of the canals — and the Martians who presumably created them — quickly vanished.

Landers may resolve riddles of Mars life, water

Early Christmas morning, a small armada of exploratory spacecraft will reach the red planet, some attempting to enter orbit, others to land -- a very risky business because of the engineering and physical challenges that await the robotic probes. Together, they represent one of the most ambitious efforts yet to resolve the contradictions that persist in alternately intriguing and beguiling scientists.

Biologists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have demonstrated that desert dust promotes the growth of algae. Scientists had already assumed that the iron in desert dust stimulated algal growth, but this has now been demonstrated for the first time. The researchers have published their findings in the December issue of the Journal of Phycology. The biologists cultured two species of diatoms in seawater originating from the iron-depleted Southern Ocean, the sea around the South Pole. The algae were supplied with dust from a desert in Mauritania and a desert in Namibia. The growth of algae which received a lot of dust was compared with that of algae which received little or no dust.

Friday, scientists are set to unleash a robotic "hound," dubbed Beagle 2, from its mother ship to hunt a tiny piece of Mars for the geochemical scent of past - and perhaps present - life. Beagle 2's release from its mother ship - the Mars Express orbiter - will represent a milestone in an unprecedented international exploration of the red planet over the next month and a half.

The British-led Beagle 2 probe is about to enter the last, and most risky, stage of its six-month-long, 250-million-mile journey. Robert Matthews meets Professor Colin Pillinger, the driving force behind the mission to the Red Planet Professor Colin Pillinger is not remotely superstitious. Even so, as the driving force behind Beagle 2, Britain's first mission to Mars, he knows all about the curse of the Red Planet - about how it took the Cold War superpowers seven attempts to get their first probe anywhere near it, and how two thirds of those sent since have failed to complete their missions.

Gene map reveals uranium-gobbling microbe’s secrets

A bacterium that can remove uranium contamination from groundwater may also be able to generate electricity, U.S. researchers said Thursday. Scientists who deciphered the gene map of Geobacter sulfurreducens say it has more than 100 genes that should enable it to make chemical changes in metals that would generate electricity.

Inter-world life transport argued

Astronomers may have shown how microbes from Earth could be spread throughout the galaxy taking life to other worlds. Scientists at Armagh Observatory and Cardiff University say bacteria could get into space on rocks blasted off the planet by an asteroid or comet impact.

Four Bay Area scientists just got back from exploring one of the highest lakes on Earth -- a frigid, emerald-green jewel 19,400 feet up in the crater of Licancabur volcano in Bolivia. Their goal: To see how life might survive in an environment so harsh that it may be the closest thing on the planet to conditions on Mars.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Associate has selected professor Janok P. Bhattacharya to join a panel of scientists developing a science plan for a proposed mission to Mars in 2013. He was appointed to the Mars Astrobiology Field Lab Mission Definition Science Steering Group co-chaired by Dave Beaty of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution.

While Mars can claim some unique features - the largest volcano and the deepest canyon in the solar system - its rocky, dusty, cold landscape has yet to yield signs of the ultimate prize: life. Three simple words - follow the water - have become the mantra of astrobiologists studying the Red Planet because the presence of water is believed to be a prerequisite for life, either past or present. But as scientists look for evidence of water on Mars, they are faced with an underlying dilemma: Will they know life when they see it?

An associate professor in the geosciences department at The University of Texas at Dallas has been selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to help develop a science plan for a 2013 mission to search for life on Mars.

Space: A bad influence on microbes?

Life is a bit different in space, even for microbes. Research shows that the pattern of gene activity in some microbes differs in weightlessness, leading to differences in behavior. These differences could be behind a curious observation: the common food-borne pathogen salmonella becomes more virulent when grown in a form of simulated microgravity.

The soft-landing Viking missions to Mars offered a challenging set of experiments to test for biological activity in 1976. As biology has progressed in the ensuing quarter-century, one of the principal investigators continues to mull over what that mission sought to test. In preparation for the three planned missions in the next month and half, those results are revisited.

The Calm Before The Storm: An Interview With Dr. Gilbert Levin

In a little over one month, the British built Beagle 2 exobiology lander will look for signs of extinct or extant life on the surface of Mars. Not since NASA's Viking mission 27 years ago has another search for life on Mars been attempted.

Mars-Like Atacama Desert Could Explain Viking No Life Results

A team of scientists from NASA, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Louisiana State University and several other research organizations has discovered clues from one of Earth's driest deserts about the limits of life on Earth, and why past missions to Mars may have failed to detect life.

Mankind's search for alien life could be jeopardised by ultra-resilient bacteria from Earth. David Derbyshire reports What was the most important discovery of the Apollo programme? Some have argued that it was the rocks that explained how the Moon was formed. Others believe it was the technological spin-offs. But according to Captain Peter Conrad, who led the 1969 Apollo 12 mission, it was life.

Scientists say one of the Earth's most inhospitable corners has soil very similar to that on Mars. The arid and almost lifeless Atacama desert in Chile could help researchers design better experiments for detecting Martian life. An international research team headed by Rafael Navarro-Gonzales of the University of Mexico compared findings from soils in the Atacama with results of similar tests from the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s.

A team of scientists is making its way to a lake at the top of the world where, despite blasting solar radiation and little protection from atmospheric ozone, life took hold and continues to thrive today. Licancabur, a dormant volcano rising 20,000 feet above sea level, is not your typical tourist spot. Atmospheric pressure at Licancabur's peak is less than half that at sea level and its equatorial location between Chile and Bolivia puts it directly in the line of fire for ultraviolet blasts from the sun.

Study suggests life sprang from clay

Science backed up religion this week in a study that suggests life may have indeed sprung from clay -- just as many faiths teach. A team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said they had shown materials in clay were key to some of the initial processes in forming life.

Scientists from NASA, the SETI Institute and other institutions will study microscopic life forms in some of the highest lakes on Earth atop a South American volcano to learn what life may have been like on early Mars. From Oct. 27 to Nov. 23, scientists will conduct field tests to examine life forms in several lakes, including the Licancabur volcano crater lake, at nearly 20,000 ft. in the Andean Altiplano on the border of Bolivia and Chile.

Bugs Save the Day

Iron lungs may be the answer. To the problem of nuclear pollution, the demand for new energy sources, the mystery of Earth's earliest life, and the search for life in space. A family of tiny iron-breathing critters discovered by Derek Lovley, professor of microbiology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is redefining what scientists have believed possible in all these areas.

The search for life

Life on other planets is always going to be an exciting subject for debate. But how do we find out if life really exists elsewhere in the Universe? One way is to travel to the planets, either with remotely operated probes or with manned spacecraft.

A new UK project could help detect evidence of life on Mars and improve our understanding of how life evolved on Earth. The aim is to develop a technique that can identify biomolecules in water that have been trapped in rocks for millions to billions of years.

Drilling five-hundred feet into a Spanish red river (Rio Tinto), astrobiologists from the US and Spain are developing techniques to look for underground life forms. The highly acidic, wine-colored river is inhospitable to most microbes except the most robust that can live off the iron and sulfur minerals which give Rio Tinto its unusual tint.

Scientists usually focus on the destructive nature of asteroids and comets slamming into Earth. But maybe the heavenly bodies were the start of something big. ANNE McILROY delves into research that accentuates the positive.

The recent discovery of abundant water on Mars, albeit in the form of permafrost, has raised hopes for finding traces of life there. The Red Planet has long been a favorite location for those speculating about extraterrestrial life, especially since the 1890s, when H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds and the American astronomer Percival Lowell claimed that he could see artificial canals etched into the planet's parched surface. Today, of course, scientists expect to find no more than simple bacteria dwelling deep underground, if even that. Still, the discovery of just a single bacterium somewhere beyond Earth would force us to revise our understanding of who we are and where we fit into the cosmic scheme of things, throwing us into a deep spiritual identity crisis that would be every bit as dramatic as the one Copernicus brought about in the early 1500s, when he asserted that Earth was not at the center of the universe.

Mars was cold - very cold, says Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center. But that doesn't mean it was incapable of supporting life. McKay has extensively studied life in some of the harshest environments in the world: the Antarctic dry valleys, the Arctic, and the Atacama desert. In part two of this series, he discusses the frozen dust and why one might want to look closer at the red planet.

Scientists Practice Mars Drilling Near Acidic Spanish River

To develop techniques to drill into the surface of Mars to look for signs of life, NASA and Spanish scientists recently began drilling 150 meters (495 feet) into the ground near the source of the waters of the Rio Tinto, a river in southwestern Spain, part of a three-year effort that will include the search for underground life forms. During the Mars Analog Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE), scientists and engineers from NASA, U.S. universities and the Spanish Centro De Astrobiología (Center for Astrobiology) hope to show how robot systems could look for life below Mars' surface. Scientists believe that liquid water may exist deep underground on Mars.

Arthur C. Clarke: Mars Has the Munchies

Mars has a case of the munchies. That is, the red planet is spotted with vegetation with some sort of life feasting on the foliage. So says Arthur Clarke, the noted sci-fi writer and space visionary, making the claim during a recent conference on the space elevator. Clarke was keynote speaker at the 2nd annual international conference on the space elevator, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Sir Arthur beamed into the gathering by satellite link on September 13.

If life exists on Mars, how would we know? Scientists have been grappling with this deceptively simple question for years. Kenneth Nealson, the Wrigley Professor of Geobiology at the University of Southern California, is a leading authority on this issue, which he will address in a public lecture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on Thursday, October 16.

NASA/Ames Research Center in Mountain View said Tuesday it has picked the University of California for a competitive $330 million, 10-year contract that will enable the space agency to harness some of the top scientific minds in the UC system. The contract taps UC Santa Cruz to manage the development of a University Affiliated Research Center whose work will focus on interdisciplinary research in astrobiology and informational technology and its fusion with nanotechnology and biotechnology.

Early Mars was cold - very cold, says Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center. But that doesn't mean it was incapable of supporting life. McKay has extensively studied life in some of the harshest environments in the world: the Antarctic dry valleys, the Arctic, and the Atacama desert.

The European exo/astrobiology network association and the Spanish astrobiological centre are jointly organising a workshop addressing the possibility of life on Mars, to take place from 18 to 20 November in Madrid, Spain.

Mars Underground: Digging Deep for Life

Martian biology is likely alive and well on the red planet, but tucked away in caves or dwelling underground, sustained by pockets of water. That prospect has spurred scientists to look for exotic life forms here on Earth, far from the maddening crowd of topside biota that covers our planet. This quizzical quarry for life is helping devise the strategies, the tools, and the procedures for unearthing the biological leftovers from an ancient Mars, or hardy microbes that might exist on that distant world today. Experts on the search for underground Martian biology took part in the Sixth International Mars Society Conference, held August 14-17, 2003.

The planet Mars may well have been the scene of the solar system's "second genesis," where forms of life vastly different from Earth's emerged deep beneath the Martian surface billions of years ago, a leading space scientist proposed Wednesday. Christopher McKay, of NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, said that life on early Mars might have been based on DNA, genes and proteins unlike anything found on Earth.

Scientist Says No Water Needed to Make Mars Red

Data from an unmanned Mars probe suggests the red planet's rusty color might have come not from water as widely believed but from tiny meteors raining on its surface, a science magazine said on Wednesday. Scientists exploring the possibility of some form of life existing on Earth's planetary neighbor are eager to establish whether water exists or has existed on Mars and, if so, in what quantities. The New Scientist magazine quoted Albert Yen of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as saying information from the 1996-97 Pathfinder mission suggested the hue came from meteors and dust containing iron and magnesium.

A team of researchers from the University of Arkansas has measured water evaporation rates under Mars-like conditions, and their findings favor the presence of surface water on the planet. Water on the planet’s surface makes the existence of past or present life on Mars a little more likely, according to the group.

On 27 August, the distance between Mars and the Earth was less than 56 million kilometres, the closest the Red Planet has been to ours for more than 60,000 years. Stargazers and amateur astronomers were treated to views of Mars unrivalled since Neanderthal times, with the distinctive red-orange planet easily visible to the naked eye. Scientists have also taken advantage of the planetary close encounter to record their own observations.

With Mars at its closest position to Earth in 60,000 years, most Red Planet enthusiasts have their eyes trained on the night sky. Some scientists from Central Washington University have turned their attention elsewhere — to Soap Lake. As part of an $840,000 study funded by the National Sciences Foundation, the team from Central Washington was on the desolate lake Friday collecting samples of green and brown slime, murky water, tiny plankton and worms. They were searching for the type of life that might have existed on Mars.

Mars 2. Mars 3. Mars 6. Viking 1. Viking 2. Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner. Mars Polar Lander. Deep Space 2. All these spacecraft have landed—or crash-landed—on Mars since the early 1970s. In a few months, they will be joined by Spirit, Opportunity, and Beagle 2. All have brought scientific instruments seeking to understand the nature of planet Mars, and if the planet once or currently harbors life. They also all brought with them terrestrial bacteria.

Small amounts of carbonate minerals have been discovered on the surface of Mars for the first time. The result could help researchers better understand the history and evolution of the planet as part of their efforts to determine if the conditions for sustaining life ever existed there. Joshua Bandfield and colleagues at Arizona State University discovered that particles on the surface of Mars reflect and absorb infrared radiation in a way that exactly matches that of magnesium-rich carbonates found on Earth (J Bandfield et al. 2003 Sciencexpress to be published).

Mars Findings Pour Cold Water on Ocean Theory

Scans of the surface of Mars have turned up clues about the Red Planet's atmosphere and suggest Mars has always been a cold, barren place, U.S. scientists said on Thursday. Using the Thermal Emission Spectrometer on NASA's orbiting Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, geologist Philip Christensen of Arizona State University and his colleagues looked for minerals known as carbonate compounds. The compounds provide clues about Mars's past because they form when carbon dioxide gas comes in contact with minerals and water.

New Mexico Tech Professor Philip Kyle, who is a leading expert on Mount Erebus in Antarctica, is helping an Australian geologist look for life on Mars. Kyle, who has traveled to Antarctica every year for the last 32 years to study Mount Erebus, was approached recently about his work on ice towers, because the geologist, Nick Hoffman, had seen the latest images taken by the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which revealed hotspots in the Hellis Basin that could be similar to ice towers in Antarctica, where microbiological life forms live on chemical energy.

Microbe makes hell its home

A microbe that thrives in boiling water and “breathes” iron has stretched the limits of where scientists believed life could exist, according to a report published on Thursday.

Liquid Water Likely Supports Life On Mars Today, Scientists Claim

Even on the present-day cold and dusty surface of Mars, liquid water may be sustaining a world of Martian microbes. Data churned out by NASA's Mars Odyssey suggests that the nearby planet is waterfront property -- at least in the form of below surface deposits of water ice. Odyssey scientists report that the soil very close to the surface over much of the planet contains large amounts of ice. Now a father and son science team argue that ice near Mars' surface means liquid water in its "topsoil", thereby strengthening the case for life on the red planet.

Geologist: Ice may hold clues to life on Mars

Giant ice towers that formed next to steaming volcanic vents in the freezing atmosphere of Mars may be the best place to look for life on the red planet, an Australian geologist said on Monday. Nick Hoffman of the University of Melbourne said the latest images taken by the Mars Odyssey orbiter had revealed curious hotspots in the Hellas Basin that could be similar to ice towers in Antarctica, where microbial life forms live on chemical energy.

New Species Of Organism Found In Mars-Like Environment

They thrive without oxygen, growing in salty, alkaline conditions, and may offer insights into what kinds of life might survive on Mars. They're a new species of organism, isolated by scientists at the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) in Huntsville, Alabama.

A study of springs and ice-covered lakes in Canada's High Arctic could help point scientists to life on Mars. Researchers from McGill University have been studying the aquatic environments at Expedition Fiord on Axel Heiberg island. The area contains the most northerly perennial springs in Canada. Nancy Martineau says these springs maintain a temperature of about 5 C all year – despite winter air temperatures that dip below -40 C.

A New Form of Life

Mark Twain didn't think much of California's Mono Lake. "It lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert," he wrote in his 1872 travelogue, Roughing It. "This solemn, silent, sailless sea--this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth--is little graced with the picturesque." Astrobiologist Richard Hoover of NASA's National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) in Huntsville, Alabama, has a different view: "It's beautiful," he says.

Spherix Incorporated (NASDAQ/SPEX), today reported that recent data on the Martian surface sent by the Odyssey spacecraft will be interpreted as evidence for liquid water, life's most essential need, in a paper to be presented at the Astrobiology session of the SPIE (International Society for Optical Engineering) meeting in San Diego on August 4. This is the latest, perhaps most compelling, round in the years'-long fight of the paper's author, Dr. Gilbert V. Levin, a life detection scientist in NASA's 1976 Viking Mission to Mars, to gain support for his conclusion that his experiment had succeeded in detecting microbial life. In his analysis of the data from Odyssey's Neutron Spectrometer, Levin says that the vast quantities of ice it found close to the surface of Mars mean that life-sustaining liquid water was in the soil sampled by his Viking experiment.

Earth, Mars Similarities Fuel Speculation About Life

The prospect of finding life on Mars is alive and well. Despite its extremely hostile environment, the red planet may indeed be an asylum for microorganisms. That viewpoint is gaining support, thanks to scientists looking for life in a range of extreme conditions right here on planet Earth. Experts that are on the trail of finding life on Mars are taking part this week in the Sixth International Conference on Mars sponsored by the California Institute of Technology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA, and the Planetary Society.

NASA found evidence of life on Mars in 1976, but dismissed the findings as impossible, two British astronomers claim. Now, evidence from missions such as the Mars Global Surveyor suggests that the early observation was correct after all.

Taking the UT/ORNL marriage to heart, this couple spends quality time descending into some of the world's deepest gold mines as a precursor to the search for life on Mars.

Alien Blood Test

Scientists Hope to Use Horseshoe Crab Blood to Hunt for Life Outside Earth. "One of the reasons the horseshoe crab has survived for so long is its advanced immune system," said Norman Wainwright, a senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass. "This system can be used to find microbial life."

Berkeley To Explore The Elements Needed To Support Martian Life

Could life once have existed on planets other than Earth, perhaps on Mars? A team of researchers led by the University of California, Berkeley, has joined the quest to find the answer. The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) announced this week that UC Berkeley is one of 12 institutions that will receive funding to study the origin, evolution and future of life in the universe. The institute is awarding the UC Berkeley-led team $1.23 million for the first year of a five-year grant to study the biosphere of Mars, both ancient and recent.

More evidence of water on Mars

Barely a year ago, Mars Odyssey found signs that the planet has reservoirs of underground ice near the south pole. Scientists at the US space agency (Nasa) estimated there was enough ice to fill Lake Michigan twice. They said it might be merely the tip of the iceberg and it seems they were right. New observations by Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor (another Nasa probe that is mapping Mars) suggest the planet's north pole has about one third more underground ice than the south. Beneath a shallow crust of dry soil, there appears to be a layer of permanently frozen ground that is up to 75% ice.

'Maybe we are the Martians'

As Europe and the United States prepare to launch missions to Mars, BBC News Online's Helen Briggs looks at our long-running fascination with the idea of Martian life.

Historic Mars lander 'did find life'

Claims have re-emerged that the US space agency (Nasa) did find signs of life on Mars during the historic Viking landings of 1976. Dr Gil Levin, a former mission scientist, says he now has the evidence to prove it, just days before the US and Europe send new expeditions to the Red Planet. The United States and Russia have spent billions since the 1960s on a handful of space craft designed to land on Mars. Only three have succeeded so far: the two Viking probes in the 1970s and Mars Pathfinder in 1997.

Mars 2003 Rovers Get Bio Scrub Ahead Of June Launch

What do NASA's soon-to-be-launched Mars Exploration Rover (MER-1 and MER-2) spacecraft have in common with the Viking and Voyager spacecraft launched decades ago? Besides being interplanetary explorers, they will be among the most biologically clean spacecraft ever launched from Cape Canaveral. Making sure the spacecraft are as biologically clean and contamination-free as possible before they leave Earth is NASA's planetary protection (PP) policy. It protects other solar system bodies from Earth life and protects Earth from extraterrestrial life that may be brought back by returning space missions.

Planetary Protection: An Integral Part of Mission Preparations

Since the early years of the space program, scientists have expressed concern about planetary protection --that is, the prevention of human-caused biological cross-contamination between Earth and other bodies in the solar system. "Hitchhiker" bacteria and other organisms on spacecraft and equipment might cause irreversible changes in the environments of other planets or interfere with scientific exploration on them. In practical terms, the concerns are twofold: avoiding (1) forward contamination, the transport of terrestrial microbes on outbound spacecraft, and (2) back contamination, the introduction onto Earth of contamination or life-forms that could be returned from space. Both concerns are covered in provision of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, as well as in NASA policies and requirements.

Scientists and engineers with the Mars Analog Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE) recently selected a location near the Rio Tinto river to drill for exotic subsurface life. Representing NASA, numerous U.S. universities, and the Spanish Centro De Astrobiología (Center for Astrobiology), the group hopes to discover underground bacteria and other microbes that feed on minerals obtained from rocks containing iron and sulfur. Though an Earth biological study, MARTE hopes to provide valuable lessons in the search for life on Mars.

The European Space Agency is soliciting scientists to come up with unique ways of identifying life on Mars. The idea is to put these detection tools on ESA's ExoMars mission, which is set to deposit a rover on the Red Planet in 2009.

Could dormant forms of bacteria called endospores potentially travel from Earth to Mars aboard spacecraft? If so, new experiments suggest that even a dry and cold Mars might not prove so inhospitable, despite the possibility of self-sterilizing and oxidizing martian soil.

Mars Gullies Could Harbor Martian Biology

Over the decades, a flotilla of Mars spacecraft have relayed back to Earth freeze-frame portraits of a cold, dry, dusty and desolate planet. But Mars experts are becoming progressively more surprised as they observe a world in constant change. Evidence is mounting that the red planet bares witness to very young, water-related features. Mars has undergone episodic climate cycles that have caused dramatic changes to its surface. Some of these climate swings may have been fairly recent as measured in geologic time.

Is there life on Mars? It's possible, but it may not Martian, say scientists. New research, published in the open access journal BMC Microbiology, suggests that conditions on Mars are capable of supporting dormant bacteria, known as endospores. This raises concern about future attempts to detect Martian life forms because endospores originating on Earth could potentially hitch a ride to Mars and survive on its surface.

Are dark spots that appear near the south pole of Mars in early spring, a sign of life on the Red Planet? No one can say for sure, according to a group of scientists who met at ESTEC, ESA's technical center in the Netherlands. Indeed ever since Mars watcher, Percival Lowell, mistook the chiselled images from his telescope as Martian 'canals', a certain skepticism has greeted fresh claims about purely visual evidence of unusual activity on the Red Planet. But as Lowell himself wrote from Flagstaff, Arizona in 1895, there is much more to the Mars habitability question than can be answered astronomically: "If Mars be capable of supporting life, there must be water upon his surface; for, to all forms of life, water is as vital a matter as air. On the question of habitability, therefore, it becomes all-important to know whether there be water on Mars."

Mars Water, Odd Surface Features Tied to Life

Mars is one wet and wild world. Scientists are slowly warming up to the view that trickling amounts of water on the cold, dry planet may be nourishing Martian biology. Thanks to spacecraft observations by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), newly formed dark slope streaks on Mars have been spotted. Emanating from a point source, they widen as they flow down slope. In some cases, they divide into separate streaks as they encounter other surface features. These sharp-edged dark stains always appear on slopes, mostly inside craters and valleys, but also on small hills. They are almost always located below Martian sea level - zero elevation.

Digging for life on Mars

Europe is stepping up its plans to search for life on Mars with proposals for a solar-powered robot that would spend months on the Martian surface. The Mars rover would be equipped with a portable lab, a drill, and a system to take soil samples from sites that could contain primitive life forms. The European Space Agency (Esa) is asking scientists to come up with ideas for the 2009 mission.

Are we alone, or is there life beyond Earth? Has life ever existed on Mars? The European Space Agency (ESA) is now offering scientists a rare opportunity to answer these fundamental questions that have intrigued mankind for centuries. In order to determine whether life ever evolved on Mars, ESA intends to launch an exobiology mission, known as ExoMars, to the Red Planet in 2009. As part of ESA’s long-term Aurora programme to prepare for future human missions, ExoMars will deploy a high-mobility rover on the Martian surface.

One of NASA's leading planetary scientists and a renowned expert on the possibility of life on Mars, Dr. Christopher P. McKay, will present a lecture at the University of Arkansas at 4 p.m. Tuesday in Giffels Auditorium. Titled "Life on Mars: Past, Present and Future," McKay's presentation will discuss evidence that, early in Mars' history, the planet had liquid water, more active volcanism and thicker atmosphere -- conditions remarkably similar to those of Earth. In fact, Mars exhibited these conditions about 3.5 billion years ago, about the same time that life appeared on our planet.

The quest for life beyond Earth generally revolves around the presence of water, which makes the recent discovery of abundant water just under the surface of Mars so tantalizing, according to NASA scientists. But the latest theory to emerge from pictures taken by the Mars Odyssey satellite orbiting the Red Planet is even more astounding: NASA researchers now believe there is a possibility that snow may have fallen on the surface in the geologically recent past.

Water 'flows' on Mars

New images and analysis suggest the slopes around the Red Planet's largest extinct volcano, Olympus Mons, contain dark stains caused by brine flowing down hill. The discovery indicates that the substantial underground ice deposits on Mars can sometimes melt and flow across the surface. It is bound to increase speculation that life may exist near to the surface of the planet.

Efforts to explore Mars - a planet that has captivated the human imagination for millenniums - represent one of the few bright spots in a space program overshadowed by the loss of the shuttle Columbia and its crew last month. Now, US and European scientists are poised for a return to the red planet late this spring in an unprecedented effort to deliver two rovers and a lander to the surface, while a new orbiter takes up station high above to gather stereo images of the planet's surface in extraordinary detail. The projects, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission and the European Space Agency's Mars Express, will help determine whether Mars could once have hosted simple forms of organic life - and whether such forms still may exist there.

Trickle Down Theory of Melting Snow May Support Life on Mars

Intriguing and often-examined gullies on Mars might not be created by water seeping out from underground springs, according to a new study. Rather, they are likely caused by trickling water from melting snowpacks, an active process that could sustain biology on the Red Planet. A leading Mars scientist has proposed a new theory regarding gully formation on the planet, backed by images taken from NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft. The research bolsters the view that liquid water is sheltered by snow, preventing the fluid from rapid evaporation in Mars' thin atmosphere.

Simple life forms are turning up in a surprising variety of below-ground environments, potentially making up 50 percent of the Earth's biomass, scientists said today at the AAAS Annual Meeting. From South African gold mines, to cooled seafloor lavas, these subsurface bugs have provided clues to the potential for life on Mars, and the diversity of possible fuel sources for life, including nuclear energy and toxic waste.

Like Earth organisms, Martian organisms would pass gas. So why not use this as a marker for life on the Red Planet? Scientists from George Mason University and the California Institute of Technology suggest we do just that. In a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists say that bacteria that evolved early in Martian history and then moved underground could be producing detectable methane.

A MELBOURNE geologist believes he's put a dent in NASA's plans to send an expedition to Mars to search for life. University of Melbourne planetary scientist Nick Hoffman has identified gully and channel development near the polar regions of Mars from images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.

An Australian geologist has identified what could be the first ever active flow of fluids through gullies on Mars. University of Melbourne geologist Dr. Nick Hoffman identified recent gully and channel development near the polar regions of Mars from images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. But contrary to the majority of scientific opinion which suggests that such features were carved by liquid water, Hoffman says the flow is most likely frozen carbon dioxide. NASA is hoping to find signs of liquid water on Mars so it can have a target for the next generation of Mars landers and rovers to go and search for life, but their search could prove fruitless if Hoffman's analysis of the images is correct.

Microbes collected from the edge of space have been brought back to life in the lab. This enabled the high-flying organisms to be identified, almost two years after they were found in air samples collected by a weather balloon cruising at 41,000 metres (135,000 feet) over southern India. How the bugs got there is not known, but there are three possibilities: they were carried up on winds, they sneaked into the samples on Earth or they have flown through space and are aliens making their way down to our planet.

Report: Microbes Rain Down from Space? More Support for Controversial Theory

A controversial finding last year of microbes high in Earth's atmosphere and thought to have come from space gained another scientist's support this week. The organisms, collected by a balloon mission to the stratosphere in January 2001, were first studied by Chandra Wickramasinghe of Cardiff University, co-proponent with the late Sir Fred Hoyle of the modern theory of panspermia. The theory states that the Earth was seeded in the past, and is still being seeded, with microorganisms from comets.

2,800-year-old frozen microbes found

In ice that has sealed a salty Antarctic lake for more than 2,800 years, scientists have found frozen bacteria and algae that returned to life after thawing. The research may help in the search for life on Mars, which is thought to have subsurface lakes of ice.

Ancient, Frozen Antarctic Life Revived, Along with Hopes for Life on Mars

Within ice that covers a salty, liquid Antarctic lake scientists have found and revived microbes that were at least 2,800 years old. The discovery, announced today, points to probable life within the underground lake and suggests the sort of ecosystem that might exist on Mars. The ancient microbes were in a state of suspended metabolism, similar to dormancy, said study team member John Priscu of Montana State University. "They're in a frozen state," Priscu said in a telephone interview. "They'll come back to life if you add water."

Primitive Housing: Potential Homes for Earth's First Life Found in Space Rock

Organic bubbles that could serve as dwellings for primitive life have been discovered inside a space rock that fell to Earth nearly three years ago. The frozen chunk of stone and metal was recovered in the Yukon Territory after eyewitnesses saw it's dramatic breakup in the sky. Inside the so-called Tagish Lake meteorite, frozen and well preserved, researchers have now found what they call organic hydrocarbon globules. Similar bubble-like structures have previously been created in laboratories at NASA's Ames Research Center, under conditions designed to simulate how Nature might have cooked up the first life on Earth.

Staggering quantities of water are hidden below the surface of Mars, the latest results from the Odyssey spacecraft suggest. The discovery doesn't alter the Mars' status as a barren wilderness because the water has been locked-up in subterranean ice for millennia, mainly around the planet's poles. But the sheer volume of ice does pertain to the likelihood that life once existed on the planet.

A totally new and highly controversial theory on the origin of life on earth, is set to cause a storm in the science world and has implications for the existence of life on other planets. Research by Professor William Martin of the University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael Russell of the Scottish Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow, claims that living systems originated from inorganic incubators - small compartments in iron sulphide rocks. The new theory radically departs from existing perceptions of how life developed and it will be published in a forthcoming issue of Philosophical Transactions series B, Chloroplasts and mitochondria: functional genomics and evolution.

In the ongoing battle between the wet and dry-Marsers, competing theories ebb and flow. Robert Cooke reports from New York. A new look at the bumps, basins and flow channels on Mars suggests the red planet, though sometimes awash with water, has been too cold and too dry to ever get life going.

Scalding Rains, Flash Floods and Worse Plagued Ancient Mars

Mars in the popular imagination is a planet that was once warm and wet, a place that might have fostered life. But new research shows how these imagined pleasant periods were brief, hellish, and punctuated by utter catastrophe. New and detailed computer modeling paints a picture of blankets of molten rock, scalding rain and colossal floods more than 3 billion years ago that rapidly and permanently scarred vast regions of the surface following crushing impacts from comets or asteroids.

In the search for life on other planets, one of the most important questions is: "What are we searching for?' Biologists on Earth have traveled to the most inhospitable parts of the planet to find extreme forms of life in hopes of answering that query. A new study from scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Center for Life Detection shows that bacteria living in Death Valley's salt-encrusted mud may hold clues to finding microbes on Mars.

NASA wants to know what the Sudbury crater has to tell scientists about life on Mars. Researchers from the U.S. space agency are probing the most inhospitable places on Earth in the hopes they will find clues about how lifeforms could survive another inhospitable place -- Mars. They are studying how lifeforms adapted to survive in the Siberian permafrost, the arid valleys of Antarctica and a dormant volcano in the Chilean Andes. And they're hoping that Canada's ancient Sudbury crater also has some secrets to reveal.

New Mexico Tech wants to see what happens when bacteria fly. Scientists at the university are testing bacteria-filled rocks to see if the organisms can survive the extreme pressures and temperatures involved in a meteor impact on another planet that might send them to Earth. If the bacteria prove hardy, it might mean that life could be widespread across the universe. "People kind of thought of this as crazy science fiction in the past, until we found this meteorite from Mars and discovered evidence of life in it in the 1990s," said Eileen Ryan, a research scientist at Tech's Magdalena Ridge Observatory Project. "Studying these rocks has implications for how we view ourselves and our place in the universe. It's an exciting idea that we're not alone."

Could life on Earth have spread to other planets? Or the other way around? An idea nearly 140 years old is resurfacing in a new form: microbes surviving space travel inside meteorites. Shielded from the intense radiation of the sun, dried out microbes could survive and sprout on a new world.

How Life Might Have Formed in Martian Impact Craters

Mars may be smaller than Earth, but it’s still huge to a roving spacecraft that can cover only 100 meters a day. For that reason, Mars mission planners must go to great lengths to find landing sites that might still carry evidence that life once existed on Mars. A key zone of speculation exists just beneath Mars’ cold, dry, dusty and inhospitable surface – where two prerequisites for life, water and heat, may be found. Such heat may come from volcanism, and indeed Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system. Asteroid impacts (most likely in the first half-billion years of the solar system but conceivably even today) are a second possibility.

Kimberly Warren-Rhodes has an eye for microscopic life. But on this day in early October, as she trekked across perhaps the driest spot on Earth, she was having trouble. She couldn't find a thing. A post-doctoral researcher with NASA-Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Warren-Rhodes hunts down hardy bacteria that thrive in climates too harsh for other life. The microbes colonize the underside of white quartz, using the opaque crystal as a "rock greenhouse" to filter the sun's rays and condense scarce moisture. Warren-Rhodes had never found a desert floor without them.

Did life come from Mars? And should it go back? At least the first question will be discussed by Australian physicist Paul Davies in a free public lecture at UC Santa Cruz on Tuesday night. Davies will present the lecture as popular science, so that people can follow the findings without specialized science training. The lecture will take place at the UCSC Sigma Xi and Physics Department in Classroom Unit 2 on the campus, at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

The highest lake in the world is located in this volcano's crater. NASA / SETI / Extremeenvironment.com In the vast wasteland of Chile's Atacama Desert, yearly rainfall is measured in tenths of inches and life is scarce. Yet, rising above its barren landscape, at an elevation of 19,410 feet (5,916 meters), Licancabur Volcano holds an ice-covered crater lake that's teaming with life. At this lake — the world's highest — the atmospheric pressure is half that at sea level and more dangerous ultraviolet radiation reaches the ground than at lower elevations.

With growing support from the federal government, scientists are accelerating their hunt for life beyond Earth. They also are broadening the search to include organisms unlike any of those on our home planet -- what some researchers call "weird life." By this, they mean alien forms of life that are not based on our familiar DNA but on a different genetic code. In theory, creatures made of unusual biological or chemical structures might exist on moons or planets that lack liquid water, a must for life as we know it.

microbe which is resistant to radiation may have come from Mars, Russian scientists say. The researchers suggest the bug may have begun life on the red planet before being blasted to earth by an asteroid. Deinococcus radiodurans can withstand a thousand times the dose of radiation that would kill a human being. To find out how this resistance was acquired, Anatoli Pavlov and his team from St Petersburg's Ioffe Physico-Technical decided to blast another microbe, E.coli, with gamma rays, according to New Scientist magazine

Comment: Nasa landed two Viking spacecraft on the Martian surface with the specific aim of searching for signs of biological activity. Not so much as a bacterium was found. The surface of Mars appeared to be a freeze-dried desert, utterly hostile to any form of life. Today this pessimistic assessment seems too hasty. I believe not only that Mars has harboured life, but it may actually be the cradle of life. This conclusion arises because of the recent discovery that our biosphere extends deep into the bowels of the Earth. Microbes have been found thriving at depths of several kilometres, inhabiting the pore spaces of apparently solid rock. Genetic studies suggest these deep-living organisms are among the most ancient on the planet. They are, in effect, living fossils.

Martian water is prime candidate

Water is the liquid that cut the fresh gullies seen on Mars in 2000, suggests a new analysis - this despite claims that other liquids may be responsible. The fleeting presence of water flowing on the Red Planet once again raises hopes that primitive life may exist just below the surface. Looking at ancient canyons and shorelines, most scientists agree that Mars was wetter and warmer billions of years ago. But the fresh gullies would indicate that running water, and perhaps life, may be a feature of Mars today.

Two of the three largest impact craters on Earth have nearly the same size and structure, researchers say, but one was caused by a comet while the other was caused by an asteroid. These surprising results could have implications for where scientists might look for evidence of primitive life on Mars.

A mission from the mid-1970s provides the benchmark. When Nasa sent two robotic Viking landers to Mars, both had been sterilised to a level comparable to the best operating theatre. The rules to be applied to each space mission fall into a discrete set of categories. These reflect scientific knowledge of the nature of the celestial bodies, and the conditions under which life exists on Earth. Thus, Venus is not judged to be in need of phenomenal standards of protection, because its surface temperature of about 500 C is far above that at which any life has been found on Earth, and the chemical bonds necessary for the maintenance of such life break down at about 160 C. Bugs on board a spacecraft sent to land there would soon be killed.

Martian rock 'does contain life'

The strange shapes seen in a rock from Mars that some researchers say are fossilised bacteria really are tiny micro organisms, say American researchers. But while they are confident the Mars rock contains fossilised life they cannot quite bring themselves to say it comes from the Red Planet, it might be Earthly contamination. Despite the uncertainty about their origin establishing that the small structures really were living things, and not just mineral globules, would be an advance in a field that has sharply divided opinions.

Evidence of water on Mars increases possibility of life

Neighboring Mars may look dry as a bone, but experts are finding evidence of life-sustaining water hidden below the planet's rugged terrain. The quantities discovered so far by instruments aboard NASA's $300 million Mars Odyssey mission equal twice the volume of Lake Michigan. Suspected for more than three decades, the watery findings compiled by the Odyssey after reaching its destination a year ago are a signpost of life on the Red Planet.

Biological Potential Seen for Mars

Mix Mars rock, water, and a heat source. What do have? Perhaps a suitable environment to support Martian life. A source of energy to power metabolism has been regarded as a limiting factor if life is to have thrived, or now exists, on the red planet. New research by a team of researchers here at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) suggests that there's hope in discovering still-alive organisms on Mars.

Q&A: Arthur C. Clarke

British-born visionary Arthur C. Clarke's writings inspired satellite communications and influenced President John F. Kennedy's May 25, 1961, decision to send American explorers to the moon. But his 1968 cinematic collaboration with the late Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, over-optimistically predicted an aggressive human expansion into space.

A hardy microbe that can withstand huge doses of radiation could have evolved this ability on Mars. That is the conclusion of Russian scientists who say it would take far longer than life has existed here for the bug to evolve that ability in Earth's clement conditions. They suggest the harsher environment of Mars makes it a more likely birthplace.

If there is life on Mars, scientists believe it's likely to be tiny organisms that can survive below the planet's surface, without sunlight or oxygen, nourished by the minerals available even in that harsh environment. In other words, said Ricardo Amils Pibernat, a researcher at the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid, past or present life on the red planet could well resemble the unusual microbes that populate Spain's Rio Tinto. The 58-mile-long river, which flows through one of the world's largest deposits of pyrite, or fool's gold, has a pH similar to that of automobile battery acid and contains virtually no oxygen in its lower depths.

A Case for Life on Mars

A multitude of arguments supporting the possible existence of life on Mars have surfaced after the discovery and examination of the ALH84001 meteorite. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found within, plus detailed examination of the ratios of certain metabolites, all have various interpretations supporting or opposing their organic origin.

Red river in Spain may hold clues to life on Mars

If there is life on Mars, scientists believe it's likely to be tiny organisms that can survive below the planet's surface, without sunlight or oxygen, nourished by the minerals available even in that harsh environment. In other words, says Ricardo Amils Pibernat, a researcher at the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid, past or present life on the Red Planet could well resemble the unusual microbes that populate Spain's Rio Tinto. The 58-mile-long river, which flows through one of the world's largest deposits of pyrite, or fool's gold, has a pH similar to that of automobile battery acid and contains virtually no oxygen in its lower depths.

Air test suggests life possible on Mars

A strange and hardy terrestrial microorganism can grow in atmospheric and soil conditions that in some ways resemble those on Mars, suggesting that life could thrive on the red planet, according to scientists. The creatures, known as methanogens, survived in a thin atmosphere of hydrogen and carbon dioxide and in a special brew of volcanic ash altered to simulate the properties of martian soil, including its density, grain size and magnetic properties. The results, in addition to the presence of vast stores of underground water on Mars, lend support to the theory that the planet once hosted or now hosts life, said Tim Kral, a researcher at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Mars-like Lab Conditions Support Life

A laboratory experiment simulating conditions on Mars found that certain terrestrial microorganisms called methanogens can survive in extreme Mars-like conditions involving low air pressure. While the work does not by any means suggest there is or ever was life on Mars, it illustrates one possible way primitive organisms might have once thrived on the Red Planet or could even exist below the surface today, according to Tim Kral of the University of Arkansas. Kral led the experiment and presented it to colleagues during a bioastronomy conference in Australia last month.

Using a unique device known as the Andromeda Chamber to simulate conditions found on Mars, University of Arkansas researchers discovered that certain microorganisms called methanogens could grow at low pressures. Their findings imply that life could have existed on the Red Planet in the past, present, or that it could do so at some point in the future. Associate professor of biological sciences Tim Kral presented the preliminary results at a bioastronomy conference in Australia in July. "Our goal is first to get the organisms to grow well, then systematically experiment with conditions found on Mars," said Kral. He and his team first grew test tube cultures of various methanogens in a Mars soil simulant called JSC Mars-1. Derived from altered volcanic ash, it approximates the composition, grain size, density, and magnetic properties of Martian soil.

A quarter of the magnetic material in a famous martian meteorite was most likely created by microbes, insist a team of researchers from the United States and Canada. The claim isn't new, but additional evidence for it is. In the August issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a team of nine researchers headed by Kathie Thomas-Keprta, an astrobiologist at NASA's Johnson Space Center, presents new evidence that at least some of the magnetite crystals in ALH84001 are organic. About 25 percent of the magnetite crystals in ALH84001 have passed a set of criteria that only biological magnetite crystals have ever met before.

Researchers Publish Latest Results In Continuing Search For Ancient Martian Life

In the latest study of a 4.5 billion-year-old Martian meteorite, researchers have presented new evidence confirming that 25 percent of the magnetic material in the meteorite was produced by ancient bacteria on Mars. These latest results were published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The researchers used six physical properties they refer to as the Magnetite Assay for Biogenicity (MAB) to compare all the magnetic material found in the ancient meteorite -- using the MAB as a biosignature. A biosignature is a physical and/or chemical marker of life that does not occur through random processes or human intervention.

Leave The Bugs At Home Please

When packing for a trip towards another planet, there are some things, such as microorganisms, that you do not want to include in your 'luggage'. For example, what if extraterrestial life is finally detected on Mars, and scientists realise afterwards that such life is actually terrestrial? Fortunately, there are strict international rules to avoid the contamination of Solar System bodies with biological material from Earth. Landers, for example, may present a special danger to the objects they set down on. The European Space Agency (ESA) is well aware of this.

South Pole May Provide Test For Mars Drilling

Measurements of the ice temperature far below the South Pole suggest that a so-called "lake" discovered at the base of the ice is most likely permafrost - a frozen mixture of dirt and ice - because the temperature is too low for liquid water. Far from being a disappointment, says a University of California, Berkeley physicist, the permafrost subglacial lake may be ideal for developing and testing sterile drilling techniques needed before scientists attempt to punch through the ice into pristine liquid lakes elsewhere in Antarctica in search of exotic microbes. Techniques that avoid contaminating a drill site with microbes also would prove useful for future drilling into Mars' polar caps in search of life.

More than 100 years ago, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli peered through his telescope and saw channels and grooves etched across the surface of Mars. The canali, as he called them in 1877, gave rise to incredible science fiction stories about intelligent aliens having engineered the strange structures. A century later, spacecraft and astronomical probes revealed not the handiwork of Martians, but compelling evidence that vast quantities of water once washed across the surface of Earth's planetary neighbour, carving out deep canyons, channels and coastlines. But the water had long vanished from the now dusty, rusty Martian surface. All that scientists have been able to detect are small amounts of water in the Martian ice caps and a bit wafting around the hazy, pink atmosphere. The missing water has been one of the most perplexing mysteries in planetary science: Was it blasted away by some cosmic disaster? Did it somehow leak out of the Martian atmosphere? Or did it, as scientists are reporting this week, seep underground, remaining there to this day? An international team, using NASA's Odyssey spacecraft, say they have collected compelling evidence that a huge amount of water is locked underground in a Martian version of permafrost. Or "buried treasure," as William Boynton, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, describes it.

Is There Earth-like Life On Mars? There Probably Is...

NASA specialists made the sensational statement that great quantities of ice have been detected one meter deep under the surface of the red planet. Specialists say that, if the detected ice melted, Mars’s surface would be covered with a 500-meter layer of water.

Mars - The Astrobiology Connection

Ronald Greeley of Arizona State University will be presenting the Director's Seminar on Monday, May 20, 2002, 11:00am Pacific (12:00pm Mountain, 1:00 Central, 2:00 Eastern). This seminar will outline the key discoveries from past and present exploration and discuss the current plans for the future. The overall strategy for Mars Exploration includes se