Ancient microbial life on Mars may have self-destructed  

Causing climate change

3.7 billion years ago, the atmospheric conditions on Earth and Mars were similar, and the existence of some microbial life on the Red Planet is very likely. A new theoretical model hypothesized that there were microbes that produced methane at that time and looked for the reason why Mars is devoid of life today. So the scientists found that instead of creating an environment that would help them survive and evolve – as it did on Earth – the Martian microbes self-destructed.

The model suggests that the gas composition of the two planets relative to their distance from the Sun was what led to the flourishing of life on Earth and the doom of life on Mars. Being farther from the Sun, Mars relied more on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and hydrogen to maintain life-friendly temperatures. So as Martian microbes consumed hydrogen (a potent greenhouse gas) and produced methane (a less potent greenhouse gas), they practically consumed the heat-trapping layer, eventually making Mars so cold that it could no longer support the evolution of complex life forms.

So as Martian temperatures dropped from the 10-20 degrees Celsius zone to -57 degrees Celsius, the microbes moved deeper and deeper into the planet’s warm crust, up to a kilometer deep, just a few hundred million years after the planet cooled. . To find evidence for this theory, researchers want to find out if any of these microbes survived.

Traces of methane have been detected on Mars by satellites, as well as by NASA’s Curiosity rover, and may be evidence that microbes are still alive.

The findings of the scientists indicate that life is not necessarily preserved in every environment that supports it and can easily self-destruct accidentally, destroying the infrastructure of its very existence.

The ingredients of life are everywhere in the universe. So it is possible that life appears frequently in the universe. But its inability to maintain the hospitable conditions on a planet’s surface lead to its rapid extinction. Our experiment goes a step further and shows that even a very primitive biosphere can have a total self-destructive effect.

The research was published in Nature Astronomy .