Salty Lake Beneath Mars’ South Pole May Be Filled With Alien Lifeforms

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Scientists have discovered a large salty lake under the surface of Mars’ South Pole. This underground lake is made up of a network of salty ponds. It’s an exciting discovery because it gives hope of finding alien lifeforms swimming in the lake.

Mars’ South Pole. Credit: ESA

The discovery made by Italian scientists using Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft has been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The scientists have studied this region of Mars for two years and they say they have now found evidence of this salty underground lake, estimated to be 12 miles to 18 miles (20 kilometers to 30 kilometers) across and buried 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) beneath the icy surface.

In addition to this, researchers also identified three smaller bodies of water surrounding the lake. These ponds appear to be of various sizes and are separate from the main lake.

High concentrations of salt are likely keeping the water from freezing at this frigid location, the scientists noted. The surface temperature at the South Pole is an estimated minus 172 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 113 degrees Celsius), and gets gradually warmer with depth.

About 4 billion years ago, Mars was a much different place. The Red Planet was warm and wet, like Earth, but then everything changed and Mars became the barren, dry world it remains today.

Finding liquid water on the Red Planet gives us hope of discovering life there. Credit: NASA

Finding water on Mars raises the chances of discovering microbial life on the planet. Alien forms could live on or inside the Red Planet.

“The presence of a subglacial lake could have important consequences for astrobiology and the presence of habitable niches on Mars,” scientists said in the statement.

Scientists also remark this these bodies of water are potentially interesting biologically and “future missions to Mars should target this region”.

Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff