Life On Mars ????
Life on Mars has always been a question mark and a probability to each and every individual , even who knows just a pinch of Astronomy owing to the planet’s conditions’ similarity to those of the Earth .
One thing I want to insist at the starting itself is never ever go with the misconception that “Existence of life needs water and air” . Because , we , the Human beings need water and oxygen to live but who knows what the other beings need to lead their life !!! They may probably need some carbon dioxide instead of oxygen which is in our case , they may need some stones to feed their stomach . This is quite amazing but yeah this is quite believable , even , right ? That means that EXISTENCE OF LIFE DOESN’T NEED WATER AND AIR IN ALL THE CASES . So with this fact , let us move forward in this journey of “Life on Mars”
The immediate ideas that led to the thought of life on Mars were the Rotation period of Mars i.e, 24 hours , 37 minutes which is nearly equal to the rotation period of the Earth i.e, 24 hours and the axial inclination of Mars , that is almost the same as ours , which leads to the condition of the seasons on Mars , expected to be quite same as that of the Earth.
Even though there are no direct sources of life on Mars , we are still trying to find out life over there just because of these similarities and then the Mars being just beside us with no immediate dangers , which are there in the case of the other neighbor of Earth i.e, Venus. And even though Mars is a cold planet , there are not even any immediate signs of “permanent freeze”.
May be, the cosmic radiations due to the absence of magnetic shield would have dried up all the Martian liquid and left us with no evidences , but still what I feel is they have left us with a hope that if we can prove the presence of magnetosphere around Mars , then there would be an obvious hope of presence of life on the Mars.And this absence of magnetosphere also accounts for the thought that the solar wind might have blown away from martian atmosphere and left it as a completely cold planet. But studies done later resulted in the possibility of finding life at depths greater than 7.5 meters of the surface of Mars.
One more thing is the findings of Methane gas in the atmosphere of Mars , which is a quite unstable gas, and this led to the conclusion that there is something else which catches hold of this methane gas and that may probably lead to the answer of the question “life on Mars? ” and even the presence of methenogenic bacteria.
Again in 2005 PFS detected formaldehyde that could possibly be the byproduct of the oxidation of methane and where does the concept of oxidation come from, on the Mars !!
In 2007, Spirit rover detected Silica in the soils of Mars , which may have been produced by the interaction of soil with acid vapors produced by volcanic activity in the presence of water.
In 1854, William Whewell, Trinity College, Cambridge, started with some theoretical models , stating the existence of seas and lands on Mars and then in the 19th century , started the misconceptions of so called Martian canals , which was a result of optical illusions. However this rose a very high level enthusiasm in people and then started the Mars’ fans 
Now , after a series of positives , negatives also started to creep into the studies . Some of them were discovered by the Mariner 4 …… Firstly , the photographs took by it and then the studies which proved the absence of magnetic field over this planet , which leads to the obvious fear of threat from the cosmic rays. Then again the M4 calculated atmospheric pressure on the planet to be about 0.6 k Pa , which means that liquid water could not exist on our Mars 
but Viking has again found evidence of water in the form of rivers and valleys.
The Labeled Release (LR) experiment has resulted in stating the presence of micro organisms in the soil as the CO2 production got increased on exposure to water and nutrients but later this was crossed away by the probability of presence of super oxidant chemicals in the soil , which misled us to the thought of micro organisms present in the soil.
The Phoenix lander , 2008 had carried an electrochemistry experiment which analyzed the ions on the Mars’ ground and revealed that Mars contains perchlorate, which has the high oxygen content and the high stability but Perchlorate adversely affects human health by interfering with iodine uptake into the thyroid gland and this point again became a negative to our hope of Life on Mars
I have covered almost all the experiments carried out to checkup any signs of life on Mars , that were carried out earlier and some other missions like Mars Sample Return Mission , ExoMars , Northern Light , and Mars Science Laboratory are planned to find any bio signatures on Mars and let us hope for the best .
And I dedicate this article to William Whewell , with whom the question of “life on Mars ” had started.
Topics: astronomy, cold planet, direct sources, journey of life, life doesn, life on mars, magnetic shield, magnetosphere, mars life, planet, radiations, rotation periodRelated posts
