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When looking for places where extraterrestrial life could potentially live, few places draw the imagination as the closest neighbor of Earth, Mars. For centuries, humans have turned to the sky and wondered if Mars was a home for aliens. And while NASA's research has not yet found evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars, it does not necessarily mean that the red planet is dead, a NASA scientist said.
Four billion years ago, the Martian surface was a wetter world, with habitable rivers, lakes and even a deep ocean.
And some astrobiologists think that an old Mars was a cradle more conducive to life than the early Earth.
While a growing scientific consensus suspects life on Earth, it could have been sown by Martian asteroids that fell on our planet.
However, Mars lost its habitability when the red planet lost its global magnetic field.
This allowed the deadly emanation of the Sun to eliminate the once-thick Martian atmosphere.
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NASA's MAVEN orbiter has shown how this process has transformed Mars into a dry, cold world we know today.
However, this global evolution does not necessarily mean that the red planet is now a dead planet.
Michael Finney, co-founder of The Genome Partnership, said, "If Mars had life 4 billion years ago, Mars still has life.
"Nothing happened on Mars that would have destroyed life.
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"So, if there was life on Mars, she might have moved, she could have hid a little, but she's probably still there."
One of the most promising hiding places to find extraterrestrial life is under the Martian surface.
Although there is a lack of running water on the Martian surface – aside from potentially occasional flows on warmer areas – there is probably a lot of water in the buried aquifers.
For example, data from Mars Express's orbiter suggests that a large lake might be hiding under the south pole of the Red Planet.
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There is no evidence of life in the Martian air, although the NASA space agency has recently spotted intriguing clues.
For example, NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover robot crossed two methane plumes inside Gale Crater (154 km), which the six-wheeled robot has been exploring since touching in 2012.
The mobile mission also determined that baseline methane concentrations in Gale's air follow seasonal cycles.
More than 90% of the Earth's atmospheric methane is produced by microbes and other organisms, which means that gas may be a signature of modern Martian life.
However, other less exciting explanations might explain that.
Abiotic processes, for example, can also generate methane, such as the reaction of hot water with certain types of rock.
And even though Mars' methane is biogenic, the creatures that created it could have been dead for a long time.
NASA data suggest that the methane plumes of the red planet have leaked from the subsoil, and it is impossible to know how long the gas was trapped there before reaching the surface.
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