Soooo I can put a good bet that very few believe that Mars has any surface water TODAY! But the evidence that Mars has lots of ice and permafrost is mounting. IF they could prove Mars has very little h2o in general that would put a big dent in plans to colonize.
why does everyone say without water there is no life? i mean they are limiting themselves to earth type life
Life needs a liquid medium to proved diffusive transport for all of its chemicals mechanisms. I have heard of a hypothesis that claimed life could live with NH3 (ammonia) instead of H2O, but the temperatures needed for liquid ammonia is very low and the metabolic rate of such a life form would be very VERY slow. Perhaps it could happen on a planet with very high atmospheric pressure. A possibel planet to test this hypothesis is Saturn’s largest moon Titian. Here Ammonia could exist in liquid form. unfortunately the temp there is what?: 80K or -200C or -350F!
Water and carbon based life is the most probable form. Doesn't make any other form impossible, but water is unique in its various properties that life utilizes, and carbon has the best bonding out of all the elements. I don't think we'll have many answers to Mars until we set foot on it. I'm hoping in a way that we find Mars has always been sterile, because then there won't be the Red-Green debate to fight through (terraform vs. leave natural for non-readers of the Red/Blue/Green Mars saga).
I hated that saga! I have all three books but could never get past 200 pages of that crap, SO BORING! If Mars does have life, which I think it does: its most likely very simple sub-terrain bacteria like critters that would not be affected if the planet were terraform. In fact we would be giving them a chance to re-conquer their planet. There is also a good chance that they will have DNA and peptides of all the same isomers that we have, in fact we could even be related. Are best hope then would be that are immune systems can handle them. If the Martian life does not have the same isomers of DNA and peptides that we have then they will be toxic to us and vise versa. This would be a problem.
