Into the Blue: Digging for Life

So it turns out that lab work isn't all beakers and lab coats: as with any job, there's plenty of administrative work to wade through as well. An incomplete list for the time being includes arranging for the servicing of some equipment, ordering new equipment, and writing a grant proposal. It's pretty amazing how long some of this can take. For example, you'd think that comparing prices of several different instruments would be easy: go to website, look up item, write down price. Not so fast. First you've got to register on the site and then get in contact with a sales rep about the exact parameters you want for the instrument. Only then will they give you a price. This way, they can send you superfluous information about their product lines every two weeks for the next hundred years...all because you just wanted to know how much their syringe pump cost...

Anyway, while I'm eagerly waiting to go do some real lab work, I'm working on a paper about biological Mars analogues. Thinking through this, I've come up with a list of conditions on Mars that appear to be particularly challenging for life, or at least the type of life we know here on Earth.

For one thing, it's cold on Mars. On the surface, it rarely gets above freezing (the Spirit rover encountered a record breaking heat wave of 5 degrees F), and thanks to the miniscule atmospheric pressure, liquid water quickly turns to gas (without the weight of the atmosphere pushing down on it, a puddle of water would quickly want to "escape" to the gas phase). It's also rather dry on Mars: condensation of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere does take place, but there doesn't seem to be much water moving around. The chemical make-up of the soil is another problem: it tends to rip electrons off neighboring molecules, often rendering them useless. And finally, without a thick atmosphere acting as a sheild, the Sun bombards the surface with a sterilizing barrage of radiation.

Sounds pleasant, doesn't it? The amazing thing is that all of these problems could be solved relatively easily by moving underground. Air temperatures may rarely get above freezing, but the ground itself can get as warm as 80 degrees! Given these temperatures and the overlying pressure of soils and rocks, liquid water could be stable. The chemistry is significantly different, and biological molecules could be quite stable, protected from the sun's harmful rays by a few meters of rocks and soils.

In other words, if we want to find any sign of present life on Mars, pack the shovel! Not coincidentally, two upcoming Mars missions, the Phoenix Lander and ESA's ExoMars, plan to do just that. Assuming all goes as planned (knock on wood), these forays into the ground could be our best shot yet at finding signs of life.