Red (and blue) planet

Liquid lake found on Mars suggests alien life is there right now!

With red sands blanketing its surface, Mars looks as dry as the Sahara. But it seems the Red Planet has some blue after all.

Scientists have discovered a giant lake beneath Mars’s frozen surface – the first evidence that there is liquid water there now, and not just billions of years ago.

the lake, which is up to 12 miles wide, also raises the probability there really is life on Mars right now.

While the planet is minus 60C on its surface, salts may have lowered the freezing point of the water to the point it can flow. the glacial lake, discovered using radar on the Mars Express spacecraft, creates the same conditions in which single- celled organisms live on Earth.

Professor Robert Orosei, who led the discovery from the University of Bologna, said: ‘this is the place on Mars where you have something that most resembles a habitat, a place where life could subsist.

‘this is not ...a place where fish would swim. But there are terrestrial organisms that can survive and thrive, in fact, in similar environments.’ Experts said the lake would be a key target for future human Mars missions. Dr Matt Balme, of the Open University, said: ‘Maybe this could even be the trigger for an ambitious new Mars mission to drill into this buried water pocket.’

it is more than 30 years since scientists suggested there could be water beneath Mars’s polar ice caps. But while vast channels on Mars are thought to have been carved by water, clear evidence that liquid water still exists was confined to a few droplets on the Phoenix lander.

it took three years for an international team to find the lake, thought to be 12 miles (20km) wide and a minimum of 3ft deep. the water, just under a mile below the surface, was located in the southern ice cap. While the lake’s temperature is likely to be minus 10C to minus 70C, the radar shows up dissolved salts likely to have lowered its freezing point to allow it to flow.

Billions of years ago, Mars is thought to have had oceans and rivers. Primitive life may have evolved, only to destroyed when Mars lost most of its atmosphere and became a frozen desert. the findings, in journal Science, suggest life could still exist, with scientists hoping that in future a robot will prove it by drilling through the ice.