(NewsNation) — A new study speculates about whether there may be some places on Mars where the conditions are right to support life – even if it’s just microscopic plants that survive through photosynthesis.
“Martian ice exposures are probably one of the most accessible places we should be looking” for life on the red planet, according to the paper’s lead author, Aditya Khuller of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The study looked at the thin sheets of ice made from frozen water (as opposed to frozen carbon dioxide) that were formed during Mars’ several ice ages.
The ice is mixed with dust, which absorbs more sunlight than the surrounding ice. That, in turn, could create just enough warmth to melt some of the ice as deep as nine feet below the planet’s surface.
And, like so many things on Earth, it’s all about location. The study says that Mars’ equivalent of Earth’s tropics, between 30 degrees and 60 degrees latitude, is where the sun’s damaging ultraviolet radiation isn’t so severe.
The combination of the tiny bits of water and not-so-intense sunlight could create what the study calls “radiative habitable zones.”
The authors are not saying that life exists in those zones, but that they could be the best places to search for life on Mars. Khuller’s team will now try to map out the most likely spots to begin the hunt.
The team’s research appears in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment.