• Question: Is it possible that mars could have been a planet like earth but life on it was destroyed by a large solar flare?

    Asked by cianm221 to Aggelos, Andrew, Eileen, Naomi, Shane on 15 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Aggelos Zacharopoulos

      Aggelos Zacharopoulos answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      @cianm221
      yes mars could have been destroyed from an unsually large solar flare. But it is still difficult to have been like earth as it is too close to the sun for “earth like” life to survive.

    • Photo: Andrew Jackson

      Andrew Jackson answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      If there is or was any life on mars, scientists think its probably most like bacteria, so nothing like alien civilisations. Unfortunately!

    • Photo: Eileen Diskin

      Eileen Diskin answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Any life that has been on Mars has probably not been a lot like what we’ve got on Earth. Right now theres a robot on Mars, that was sent up with a spacecraft last year. Its taking lots of samples and doing experiments to figure out if there used to be life there. Here’s a cool photo – it took a self portrait of itself! http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16239.html

    • Photo: Naomi Elster

      Naomi Elster answered on 16 Nov 2012:

      Mars is very different from Earth in its chemical composition and distance from the sun, so if there ever was life on it I doubt it would have been life like on Earth.

      Did you know that when HG Wells’ sci-fi story “War of the Worlds” was first broadcast on radio, people confused it with a news report?! There was panic in America as people thought Martians really had landed in New Jersey!

      I’m good on biology and not so good on physics, so I don’t know much about solar flares :/ but I would say it is possible that an unusually large solar flare could have affected life on Mars, but not likely.

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