Is there life on Mars? Scientists do not give up hope

The Red Planet has always been one of the most mysterious objects in the sky for humans. Even ancient astronomers have discovered that this heavenly body and several others behave quite differently than other objects. Unlike other stars, they constantly change their position in the sky.

Actually, the The name "planet" came to Russian and other European languages from the Ancient Greek, where it literally meant "wandering". Although the differences between the planets and the stars were discovered long before the Greeks by the Sumerians and Babylonians, yet today we are using the legacy of the ancient civilization. The planets were named according to the associations that they evoked from the Greeks and Romans. The faded color of Venus was associated with sea foam, as a result of which it became identified with the goddess of love. Mercury, which moves faster than all the night sky, was associated with the famous messenger of the gods (Hermes in the Greek version). The red-faced Mars could not but cause associations with fires and destruction. For which he received the name of the god of war.

And this planet attracted attention not only in ancient times. It evokes interest in us today. Perhaps among all the cold bodies of the solar system, Mars is the most frequent visitor in human art. The ancients connected it with the divine essence. In the Renaissance, when it became more known about the planets, Mars began to cast even more bizarre fantasies. The question of whether there is life on Mars was often played out in fantasy novels. Thus, one of the first science fiction writers, Herbert Wells, His "War of the Worlds" describes the terrible Martians, far ahead of the earthlings in technological development and arrived to destroy our civilization. And Edgar Burroughs, on the other hand, draws a Martian society noble and strong, albeit surprising from the point of view of the Earthman who got into this company.

And what science will tell us: is there life on Mars?

Very often fantastic stories, as noted above, are brought to writers and directors precisely by scientific ideas and ideas about the limits of the possible. For the first time scientists rationally looked at the question of whether there is life on Mars, as far back as the 17th century. Then it was discovered in telescopes that the red planet has polar caps and a number of other characteristics similar to the terrestrial ones. This, of course, gave birth to the idea of the possible existence of flora and fauna there. Such indirect evidence was discussed by scientists of the Earth right up to the era of space flights.

In the end, to put an end to the debate about whether there is life on Mars or not, there could only be one way. Thus, the first artificial object was launched to the planet in 1962, but control was lost. They were the Soviet apparatus Mars-1. Mars-2 reached the surface of the planet, but crashed when landing. And only Mars-3 in 1971 safely got to the goal and helped to conduct a number of valuable experiments. Thanks The Soviet program "Mars" and the American "Viking" finally had a close acquaintance with this heavenly body.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, the spacecraft not only did not find traces of life, but the conditions that the red planet met them, talked about the impossibility of existence there of complex organisms. However, the fact that the atmosphere of Mars is mainly composed of carbon dioxide, leaves serious hopes for finding traces of life in the past. The fact is that carbon dioxide is a product of plant life. And then its presence can be explained if life on Mars really existed once.

Already in the 2000s, space vehicles were sent back to the planet for study. "Phoenix" in 2008 and Curiosity ("Curiosity") in 2012. The latter is a whole research station. Its purpose is to thoroughly study the soil of the planet. After all, previous studies have shown that there can not be a complicated life. But is there life on Mars of microorganisms, and if there is, where and at what depth it will be found, remains a very curious mystery. The basis for these hopes are meteorites of Martian origin, which once fell to Earth. Surprisingly, there were found traces of primitive bacteria. In addition, there is reason to believe that today the planet is still water. And this gives a significant head start for life in any of its manifestations.