Leading Oxford Scientist Gives His View on Chances of Alien Life on Mars
The quest for aliens in the outer space seems like an unending quest yet an expert gives his view about the chances of alien life on Mars as he also has a big participation in Europe's first attempt to land on Mars as his latest mission to look for evidence of alien life on the Red Planet.
This expert is no other than Dr. Colin Wilson, of Oxford University's Department of Physics. He had a run of bad luck with the Red Planet as his experiment to measure winds failed on Beagle 2 after he had already experienced failures with two NASA probes, one of which crashed while the other was lost in space but he did never stop and keep on proving something about the Red Planet.
Dr. Wilson gave his view for the case of aliens life on Mars as reported on skymania:
"It is possible to find niches below the surface where liquid water is still percolating through rocks, though it's not a great place for life to develop in much complexity. So I think a more likely explanation may be that when Mars, a long time ago, had much more liquid water on its surface, that water flowed past rocks at that time and produced methane.
"If some of that methane it is still dissolved in the rocks, still trapped in rocks which were formed at that time, then erosion of those rocks today could be letting methane into the atmosphere. So my best guess is that the methane is of mineralogical origin is from the non-biotic origin, and I think formed in a time long gone by, but finding out where these methane-rich rocks are will tell us about where liquid water was in his past."
For those hoping that alien life will be found, Dr. Wilson added: "I think all the possibilities are exciting. I've just put forward a guess. The way science works is by looking at other people's guesses and finding out which are supported by the evidence."
Dr. Wilson also gives his life statement comparison with the Mars, "I think there are a lot of reasons why life on Mars now is extraordinarily challenging. Life as we know it requires liquid water. Liquid water on Mars today, if there is any, is in underground niches. Near the surface, there is lots of water in ice form."