Large groups of dark spots in the southern
craters of Mars which spread every Martian spring could prove there is life on
Mars, Hungarian scientists said today.
"We cannot find anything else to explain it," said evolutionary
biologist Tibor Ganti, a member of the three-man Hungarian team that believes it
has discovered life on the red planet.
The team studied 60,000 photographs taken by the
Mars Global Surveyor Probe before concluding that the organisms lived by
photosynthesis.
"The organisms live between the surface of Mars and a thick ice cover that
isolates them extremely well from Martian temperatures of around minus 120
degrees Celsius," Ganti told AFP.
"When the spring comes and light penetrates the ice, these organisms absorb the energy of light and warm up themselves. Under the ice, temperatures rise to slightly above zero degrees Celsius. A thin inner layer of the ice melts, thus creating the conditions of life.
"In the summer, when the whole ice cover
melts and the water evaporates, they dry out again," he said.
The dark spots start spreading in the spring, varying from 10 m to several
hundred metres in diameter.
"The organisms could be algae or lychen at the most, similar to organisms
that can be found on tundra close to the earth's North and South poles,"
Ganti said.
"A lot of arguments support the conclusion that these are living organisms and, so far, nothing has been raised against it.
"This could be the first evidence on life on Mars," he said.
Further probes, including spectroanalyses, are necessary to prove that the spots contain materials that are capable of photosynthesis.
The team, which includes biologist Eoers Szathmary and astronomer Andras Horvath, thinks the organisms could be the remnants of life that existed on Mars when it still had an atmosphere, some 2 or 3 billion years ago, according to Ganti.
Agustin Chicarro, one of the leaders of the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Mars Express Programme, visited the team last week to decide whether the find could be included in the ESA programme. The agency hopes to send a probe to Mars in 2003.