Ancient Bacteria on Mars

For a terrestrial bacterium, Mars is a cold, dry and dead hell, however, for a hypothetical Martian bacterium, the earth would be a paradise where it could multiply full of nutrients, potentially we could use its food and the terrestrial organisms could not stop it because they have never faced something similar. It looks like the script of a science fiction movie, but it is a risk that worries some scientists. Recently, a research team from NorthWestern University in the United States discovered that ancient bacteria could survive near the surface of Mars and also discovered that when these bacteria are buried and therefore protected from radiation from outer space, they can survive for much longer than previously thought. The researchers are not talking about the fact that these bacteria could survive for a few years, not a few centuries, not a few millennia, they are talking about the fact that these bacteria can revive after hundreds of millions of years, it should be clarified that bacteria have not yet been found, nor any other signs of life present or past on Mars.

The researchers have carried out their experiments with terrestrial bacteria with an amazing resistance; Scientists believe that Mars met the necessary conditions for life as we know it to arise on it, there was a time at the beginning of its existence when the red planet was a blue and white planet and it was for a period between a few hundred million or perhaps a few billion years; the blue one is because it had rivers, lakes and a large ocean and the white one because despite the fact that the temperatures were warmer than the current ones because it had a thicker atmosphere, it is also true that Mars is further from the sun that the earth and that in the early days of the existence of the solar system the sun was somewhat colder than it is today. So the poles, the mountains and much of the Martian landscape would be covered by snow and glaciers, during that same time the earth was a planet of bacteria and microscopic beings, animal life is something relatively modern in terrestrial history, it did not begin to evolve until about 600 or 550 million years ago, by then Mars had already lost its oceans and was a cold, dusty dry planet, so as far as we know if life did emerge on Mars it could reach the level of bacteria , but did not have time to evolve further.

The question scientists have now asked is whether bacteria ever existed, could they adapt to survive the increasingly harsh and extreme conditions on Mars, and in the end be some of them alive or dormant under the ground? Chemistry professor Brian Hoffman, lead author of the newsworthy research, said: "We concluded that terrestrial contamination on Mars would be essentially permanent over thousands of years, this could complicate scientific efforts to find Martian life, also if the microbes evolved on Mars could be able to survive until today, that means that returning samples from Mars could contaminate the earth”, declared the scientist.

The researchers determined that some terrestrial microorganisms could potentially survive on Mars on geological time scales of hundreds of millions of years, in fact, the researchers discovered that Deinococcus hinococcus radiodurans known affectionately as "Conan the bacteria" after Conan the Barbarian from the movie . It turns out that this bacterium is particularly well-suited to surviving harsh Martian conditions. In the new experiments, Conan survived astronomical amounts of radiation in an arid, icy environment, such as exists on the Red Planet, far outnumbering spores that can survive. on earth for millions of years, scientists calculated that Conan can survive 280 million years, which is an outrage for an organism.

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