Is there life on Mars 2? Is there life on Mars? Is life possible on Mars? Important discoveries on Mars in recent years

30.04.2021

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Is it possible life on mars and its presence in the past of the planet: research, launching devices with photos, living conditions on the surface, distance from the star, atmosphere.

We always feel alone. Just think about how huge our Universe is, but so far we know that life exists only on a small stone planet Earth. A Is there life on Mars?

The bottom line is that we may never meet beings like us. But life can take many forms. Maybe there are space whales on Titan swimming through ammonia lakes. Or somewhere bacteria are clumps of pure energy.

Is life possible on Mars?

When looking for life on the planet, we focus on the presence of water. But studies show that the solar system is full of it! It is found on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, as well as on comets and asteroids. Well, let's not forget about Mars.

There are many similarities between Mars and Earth. But the planet is smaller, with low pressure and a weak atmosphere. It has large polar caps. Due to proximity and similarities, scientists drew attention to their neighbor and engaged in active study.

Of course, everyone was interested in life on Mars. In 1976, the Viking apparatus decided to answer this question. He had three biological experiments with him. In the first, Martian soil was collected and the released chemicals were calculated when mixed with a reagent. The second placed terrestrial organic compounds in the soil of the Red Planet and noted the release of carbon dioxide. In the third, Martian sand was heated and the yield of organic matter was monitored.

It turned out that all three experiments confirmed the presence of the material! Unfortunately, each could be explained by a non-biological cause. Because of this, many disagreements arose among astrobiologists.

In 1994, more convincing evidence was obtained. On the territory of Atlantis, a meteorite that arrived from Mars was discovered. It seemed to them that petrified bacterial life was hiding inside. But ... it could get there from our planet.

NASA was fed up with constantly being confronted with doubts about life on Mars, so they decided to look for information devoid of contradictions.

Spirit and Opportunity rovers were sent to the surface of the Red Planet in 2004 to look for traces of past water. Years passed and the devices still managed to collect a lot of valuable information. They found iron-rich hematite, which forms on our planet in water conditions. Mineral gypsum was also found. You can admire photos of the surface of Mars from rovers in high resolution.

In 2012, the Curiosity rover landed on the planet, which found that water remained on the surface of the planet for long periods of time. This was enough to form and develop Martian life. Traces of the influence of water on the rocks were also noted.

Despite today's picture, the early Martian environment was warmer and wetter. But even the discovery of fossil life is better than nothing. But the strongest evidence is found not on the Martian surface, but in the atmosphere.

Several probes have been able to track methane emissions. This is a chemical that is quickly destroyed by the action of sunlight. The period of its decomposition is hundreds of years. So, there must be a source replenishing stocks. It can be volcanic activity or microbes.

It is also expected to launch a mobile astrobiological laboratory Mars-2020, which will be able to extract material and analyze it on the spot. He will also search for chemicals created by a past life.

Was Mars habitable in the past?

It is amazing that we can not only find life on Mars, but also find a common ancestor. In fact, scientists say Mars used to be the best place to create life.

While the Earth was still trying to recover from the impact with the massive body and the formation of the Moon, Mars could already have life. But where is the connection? In those days, life could roam from planet to planet with the help of asteroid attacks. Martian fragments could easily become a vehicle for the first organisms.

If we find Martian life, how do we know we're connected? By analyzing the structure of DNA. This would help to expand the history of the formation of life and study the process of transfer of organisms in space.

If we can find a link to Martian life, that would prove that organisms managed to spread through the system. But is there more life? So far, we are only adding to the list of exoplanets and studying neighboring stars.

But what if Martian life has nothing to do with us? It's also amazing, because we'll reveal new conditions for its formation and expand the search criteria in alien worlds.

Not everyone is happy with the search for life on Mars, because there are more worthy candidates - Europa and Enceladus, which have large-scale oceans. But Mars is still closer, and we cannot leave these questions unanswered.

Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Professor A. PORTNOV.

"Whether there is life on Mars, whether there is life on Mars - science does not know" - this is not just a good aphorism from the popular comedy film "Carnival Night", which has widely entered our colloquial language and has become a walking joke. The main thing here is that this phrase for a very long time reflected our actual level of knowledge about the existence of life on the Red Planet. And only now, in recent years, when the latest scientific observations, studies, facts have been collected and processed, all this allows us to say: "There was life on Mars!"

Red Planet. The picture was taken during the last opposition of Mars, in March 1997.

For thousands, millions of years, numerous highly branched river flows on Mars have eroded strata of loose red-colored rocks.

There are many fresh meteorite craters along the banks of the dried up channel of the former Martian river.

Why is Mars red?

Mars has been called the "Red Planet" since time immemorial. A bright red disk hanging in the night sky during the years of the Great Controversies, when this planet is as close as possible to the Earth, has always caused some unsettling feeling in people. It is no coincidence that even the Babylonians, and then the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans, associated the planet Mars with the god of war, Ares or Mars, and believed that the time of the Great Controversy was associated with the most cruel wars. This gloomy sign, oddly enough, sometimes comes true in our time: for example, the Great opposition of Mars in 1940-1941 coincided with the first years of World War II.

But why is Mars red? Where does this blood color come from? Oddly enough, the similarity of the color of the planet and blood is due to the same reason: the abundance of iron oxide. Iron oxides stain blood hemoglobin; ferric oxides, combined with sand and dust, cover the surface of Mars. Soviet and American space stations that made soft landings in the Martian deserts transmitted to Earth color images of rocky plains covered with red ferruginous sand. Although the Martian atmosphere is very rarefied (its density corresponds to the atmosphere of the Earth at an altitude of 30 kilometers), dust storms here are unusually strong. Sometimes it happens that because of the dust, astronomers cannot see the surface of this planet for months.

American stations transmitted information about the chemical composition of the Martian soil and bedrock: on Mars, deep dark rocks predominate - andesites and basalts with a high content of iron oxide (about 10 percent), which is part of silicates; these rocks are covered with soil - a product of weathering of deep rocks. The content of sulfur and iron oxides is sharply increased in the soil - up to 20 percent. This indicates that the red Martian soil consists of oxides and hydroxides of iron with an admixture of ferruginous clays and calcium and magnesium sulfates. On Earth, soils of this type are also quite common. They are called red-colored weathering crusts. They are formed in a warm climate, an abundance of water and free oxygen in the atmosphere.

In all likelihood, red-colored weathering crusts arose on Mars under similar conditions. Mars is red because its surface is covered with a powerful layer of "rust" that corrodes dark deep rocks. Here one can only wonder at the insight of the medieval alchemists, who made the astronomical sign of Mars the symbol of iron.

But in general, "rust" - an oxide film on the surface of the planet - is the rarest phenomenon in the solar system. It exists only on Earth and Mars. On the rest of the planets and the numerous large moons of the planets, even those believed to contain water (in the form of ice), the underlying rocks remain unchanged for almost billions of years.

The red sands of Mars, dispelled by hurricanes, are particles of the weathering crust of deep rocks. On Earth, in our time, such dust is cursed by drivers on dirt roads in Africa and India. And in past eras, when our planet had a greenhouse climate, red-colored barks, like lichens, covered the surface of all continents. Therefore, red-colored sands and clays are found in deposits of all geological epochs. The total mass of the Earth's red flowers is very large.

Red-colored crusts are generated by life

Red-colored weathering crusts on Earth arose a very long time ago, but only after free oxygen appeared in the atmosphere. It is estimated that green plants produce all the oxygen in the earth's atmosphere (1200 trillion tons) by geological standards almost instantly - in 3700 years! But if the terrestrial vegetation dies, free oxygen will disappear very quickly: it will again combine with organic matter, become part of carbon dioxide, and also oxidize iron in rocks. The atmosphere of Mars is now only 0.1 percent oxygen, but 95 percent carbon dioxide; the rest is nitrogen and argon. For the transformation of Mars into the "Red Planet" the current amount of oxygen in its atmosphere would be clearly not enough. Consequently, "rust" in such large quantities did not appear there now, but much earlier.

Let's try to calculate how much free oxygen had to be removed from the atmosphere of Mars for the formation of Martian reds? The surface of Mars is 28 percent of the surface of the Earth. For the formation of a weathering crust with a total thickness of 1 kilometer, about 5,000 trillion tons of free oxygen were withdrawn from the atmosphere of Mars. This suggests that there was once no less free oxygen in the atmosphere of Mars than on Earth. So there was life!

Frozen rivers of Mars

There was a lot of water on Mars. This is evidenced by spacecraft photographs of an extensive river network and grandiose river valleys, similar to the famous Colorado Canyon in the United States. The frozen seas and lakes of Mars are now probably buried in red sands. It seems that Mars, along with the Earth, experienced the epoch of the Great Ice Ages. On Earth, the last grandiose glaciation ended only 12-13 thousand years ago. And now we live in an era of global warming. Photos of Mars show that many kilometers of permafrost are also thawing there. This is evidenced by giant landslides of melting red-colored soil along the slopes of river valleys. Since the climate of Mars is much colder than the Earth's, it leaves the era of the last glaciation much later than us.

So, the combined effect of water and oxygen in the atmosphere, and even a warmer than now, climate could lead to the fact that Mars was covered with such a powerful layer of "rust", and now it is visible as a "red eye" for many hundreds of millions of kilometers. And one more condition: this "rust" could only arise if there was once lush vegetation on the "Red Planet".

Is there any evidence that this was the case? The Americans discovered a meteorite in the ice of Antarctica, abandoned by some terrible explosion from the surface of Mars. Something similar to the remains of primitive bacteria has been preserved in this stone. Their age is about three billion years. The ice shell of Antarctica began to form only 16 million years ago. But it is not known how long a fragment of Martian rock was spinning in space before it fell to Earth. Strong explosions on Mars, according to many experts, occurred not so long ago - 30-35 million years ago.

The history of the development of life on Earth shows that in just 200 million years, the primitive blue-green algae of the Precambrian turned into mighty forests of the Carboniferous period. This means that on Mars there was more than enough time for the development of complex life forms (from those primitive bacteria that were imprinted on stone to lush impenetrable forests).

That is why to the question: "Is there life on Mars? .." - I think we should answer: "There was life on Mars!" Now, apparently, it is practically absent, because the oxygen content in the Martian atmosphere is negligible.

What could destroy life on this planet? It is unlikely that this happened because of the Great glaciations. The history of the Earth quite convincingly shows that life still manages to adapt to glaciations. Most likely, life on the Red Planet was destroyed by impacts of giant asteroids. And evidence of these impacts is the red magnetic iron oxide, which makes up more than half of the iron oxides in the red flowers of Mars.

Maghemite on Mars and on Earth

An analysis of the red sands of Mars revealed an amazing feature: they are magnetic! The red flowers of the Earth, having the same chemical composition, are non-magnetic. This sharp difference in physical properties is explained by the fact that iron oxide, the mineral hematite (from the Greek "hematos" - blood) with an admixture of limonite (iron hydroxide), acts as a "dye" in terrestrial red flowers, and on Mars the mineral maghemite serves as the main dye. It is a red magnetic iron oxide having the structure of the magnetic mineral magnetite.

Hematite and limonite are iron ores widespread on Earth, while maghemite is rare among terrestrial rocks. It is sometimes formed during the oxidation of magnetite. Maghemite is an unstable mineral; when heated above 220 ° C, it loses its magnetic properties and turns into hematite.

Modern industry produces large quantities of synthetic maghemite - magnetic iron oxide. It is used, for example, as a sound carrier in tapes. The reddish-brown color of tapes is due to the admixture of the finest powder of magnetic iron oxide, which is obtained by calcining iron hydroxide (an analogue of the mineral limonite) to 800-1000 ° C. Such magnetic iron oxide is stable and does not lose its magnetic properties upon repeated calcination.

Maghemite was considered a rare mineral on Earth until geologists discovered that the territory of Yakutia was literally covered with a huge amount of magnetic iron oxide. This unexpected discovery was made by our geological team when searching for diamondiferous kimberlite pipes revealed many "false anomalies". They were very similar to kimberlite pipes, but differed by an increased concentration of magnetic iron oxide. It was a heavy red-brown sand, which, after calcination, remained magnetic, like its synthetic counterpart. I described it as a new mineral variety and called it "stable maghemite". But many questions arose: why does it differ in properties from "ordinary" maghemite, why is it similar to synthetic magnetic iron oxide, why is there so much of it in Yakutia, but not among the numerous red flowers of ancient deposits or in the equatorial belt of the Earth? .. Doesn't it mean is it that some mighty flow of energy once burned the surface of the north-east of Siberia?

I see the answer in the sensational discovery of a giant meteorite crater in the basin of the Siberian Popigay River. The diameter of the Popigai crater is 130 km, and to the southeast there are also traces of other "star wounds", also considerable - tens of kilometers in diameter. This terrible catastrophe happened about 35 million years ago. Perhaps she determined the boundary of two geological epochs - the Eocene and the Oligocene, on the border of which archaeologists find traces of a sharp change in the types of life.

The energy of the cosmic impact was truly monstrous. The diameter of the asteroid is 8-10 km, the mass is about three trillion tons, the speed is 20-30 km/s. It pierced the atmosphere like a bullet through a sheet of paper. The impact energy melted 4-5 thousand cubic kilometers of rocks, mixing together basalts, granites, sedimentary rocks. Within a radius of several thousand kilometers, all life perished, the water of rivers and lakes evaporated, and the surface of the Earth was calcined by cosmic flame.

The fact that the temperature and pressure at the moment of impact were monstrous is evidenced by special minerals that are now found in the rocks of the Popigay crater. They could arise only at "unearthly" pressures of hundreds of thousands of atmospheres. These are heavy modifications of silica - coesite and stishovite, as well as a hexagonal modification of diamond - lonsdaleite. The Popigai crater is the world's largest diamond deposit, but not cubic, as in kimberlite pipes, but hexagonal. Unfortunately, the quality of these crystals is so low that they cannot be used even in technology. And, finally, one more result of powerful calcination. The red-colored limonite crusts that came to the surface received such a burn that iron hydroxides turned into red magnetic iron oxide - stable maghemite.

The discovery in Yakutia of huge amounts of red magnetic iron oxide is the key to unraveling the magnetism of red-colored crusts on Mars. After all, there are more than a hundred meteorite craters on this planet, each of which is larger than Popigai, and smaller ones cannot be counted.

Mars "hard hit" from meteorite bombardments. Moreover, many craters are relatively young. Since the surface of Mars is almost four times smaller than the earth's, it is clear that it was subjected to powerful calcination, a cosmic burn, during which the ferruginous weathering crusts were magnetized. The content of maghemite in the soil of Mars is 5-8 percent. The current rarefied atmosphere of this planet can also be explained by an asteroid attack: gases at high temperatures turned into plasma and were forever ejected into space. The oxygen in the atmosphere of Mars seems to be relict: it is a tiny remnant of the oxygen that was generated by life destroyed by asteroids.

The third moon of Mars?

Why did asteroids attack the Red Planet so violently? Is it only because it is closer than others to the "asteroid belt" - the fragments of the mysterious planet Phaeton, which may have once existed in this orbit? Astronomers suggest that Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos were once captured by the planet's gravitational field from the asteroid belt.

Phobos revolves around Mars in a circular orbit at a distance of only 5920 km from the surface of the planet. For a Martian day (24 hours 37 minutes), he manages to circle the planet three times. According to some calculations, Phobos has almost come close to the so-called "Roche limit", that is, to the critical distance at which gravitational forces tear the satellite apart. Phobos is shaped like a potato. Its length is 27 km, width - 19 km. The collapse and fall of fragments of such a giant "potato" will cause terrible blows to Mars and a new calcination of its surface. The rest of the atmosphere, of course, will be torn off and go into space in the form of a stream of hot plasma.

The idea arises that Mars has already experienced something similar in the past. It is possible that he had at least one other companion. The best name for it would be Thanatos - Death. Thanatos passed through the Roche limit, ahead of the now dying Phobos. It may very well be that it was these debris that destroyed all life on Mars. They erased plant life from the surface of Mars, destroyed the dense oxygen atmosphere. When they fell, the red-colored crust of Mars was magnetized.

The next few million years turned out to be enough for Mars to turn into a lifeless desert with frozen seas and rivers covered with red magnetic sand. Similar or lesser cataclysms are not a miracle at all in the world of planets. Does anyone on Earth now remember that on the site of the giant Sahara desert, only 6 thousand years ago, deep rivers flowed, forests rustled and life was in full swing? ..

Literature

Portnov A. M., Fedotkin A. F. Clay minerals and maghemite as a cause of airborne geophysical anomalies-interference. Exploration and protection of mineral resources. "Nedra" No. 4, 1986.

Portnov A. M., Korovushkin V. V., Yakubovskaya N. Yu. Stable maghemite in the weathering crust of Yakutia. Report Academy of Sciences of the USSR, vol. 295, 1987.

Portnov A. M. Magnetic red flowers - an indicator of an asteroid attack. Proceedings of universities. Geological series. No. 6, 1998.

The Martian civilization was destroyed by Death. Fear and Horror remain...

The discovery of the Russian scientist, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences A. Portnov, confirms that there was life on Mars, but it died as a result of a grandiose cosmic catastrophe.

Mars has been called the "Red Planet" since time immemorial. The light of this bloody "droplet" in the night sky invariably aroused a feeling of anxiety in a person.

And probably not in vain the ancient Greeks, Babylonians and Romans identified Mars with the god of war.

During the periods of Great Controversy, when Mars approached our planet at its maximum distance, the most cruel of wars began. This gloomy sign came true in our times - the approach of Mars in 1940-1941 was marked by the beginning of World War II ...

The history of Mars exploration consists of a continuous series of hopes and disappointments. You can recall the famous "channels", which was discovered by the Italian astronomer Schiaparelli. He was the first to suggest that the mysterious stripes and lines visible through a telescope on the surface of the Red Planet are the work of an extraterrestrial civilization.

And then it's time for surprises. Channels appear and disappear. Certainty was not found, although many prominent astronomers hunted for the phenomenon. Sky maps had to be redrawn with depressing frequency. The "channel" of Nefes-Thoth, for example, visible at first absolutely clearly, in 1939 became barely noticeable, in 1941 it completely forked, and in 1958 turned into an incomprehensible wide strip.

Or, for example, the "channel" Erinnis, which appears in the reports of the famous Schiaparelli - it disappeared immediately after it was opened, and reappeared only in 1941. All this gave abundant ground for reflection. Enthusiasts assured that the mysterious "behavior" of the "channels" indicates that the Martian civilization continues to exist. Skeptics even said that the "channels" are an optical illusion.

Such is the fate of the Martian pyramids, whose clear geometric shapes, similar to those of Egypt, caused another storm of controversy.

And Mars did not stop making fun of scientists, throwing them once again a new "illusion".

... 1976, July 25 - the American interplanetary station "Viking-1" photographed on the surface of the "Red Planet" an amazing formation 1.5 km long, resembling a woman's face. It was a sensation - the picture went around all the world's periodicals and repeatedly appeared on television.

Mark Carlotto, an American specialist from the Analyst Science company in Boston, built a three-dimensional image of the mentioned structure using a computer technique and - in fact, received a "head"! After, having increased the contrast of its right, shaded side, I found a second "eye" about 100 meters below the "nose" and even something that looked like "teeth"! In his article in the scientific journal Applied Optics, Carlotto wrote: "The results obtained suggest that all this can NOT be of natural origin."

A little later, researcher Vincent di Pietro and cyberneticist Gregory Molenaar found a second image of the same "face" in the archive of Martian images stored by NASA! This photo was taken 35 days after the first one under different lighting conditions. Computer processing not only confirmed the details of the first image, but also revealed additional details.

Now “eyeballs” with “pupils” were visible on it, again “teeth” and on the “cheek” illuminated by the sun ... a stone “tear”! Di Pietro and Molenaar concluded: “If the striking details of this stone “head” appeared naturally, then nature must be a highly developed being!”

1995, June 25 - NASA management, under pressure from the public, included in the flight program of the interplanetary station "Mars Global Surveyor" a control survey of the "face". April 5, 1998 - the long-awaited pictures were received at the Mission Control Center. The interplanetary station photographed the mysterious "female face" from a height of 440 km (in 1976, the survey was carried out from a height of 1,870 km). And the "Martian surprises" began again - the "face" disappeared, as the "channels" had previously disappeared. In the new pictures, instead of the already famous Sphinx, there were ordinary rocks, in which it is difficult to see the “face” even with the most violent imagination.

Where could the gigantic sculpture, whose image once passed more than one strict examination, have gone? Fans began to blame everything on the traditional cunning of officials from the American space science, who have long gained fame as "clamping" space images with anomalous plots. They, they say, did not cost anything to present a photograph of a completely different place ... Or was there some kind of cataclysm that destroyed the giant statue? Or did the Martians decide to hide it from the lenses of earthlings? Or is it really just a play of light and shadow?

One way or another, but scientists again do not have a clear answer to the question that has become sacramental: ? Therefore, A. Portnov's hypothesis, which introduces some certainty, seemed interesting to us. The starting point for reflection was the unusual color of the Red Planet.

Let's ask ourselves: why is Mars blood red? The similarity of the color of Mars and blood is due to the same reason - the abundance of iron oxide. It is this substance that also stains hemoglobin in the blood. and the Martian surface.

Soviet and American space stations that landed on Mars transmitted detailed images of rocky deserts covered with red ferruginous sand.

The astute alchemists of the Middle Ages were not mistaken in making the sign of Mars the symbol of iron. Almost the entire surface of Mars is covered with a thick layer of rust.

And where there is rust, there is water. There used to be plenty of water on this planet. This is evidenced by the traces of the once grandiose water flows remaining on the surface. The red-colored Martian sands are essentially ancient weathering crusts washed out by rivers and scattered by winds.

However, water alone is clearly not enough to form a “rusty planet”. For example, the large satellites of Jupiter, Ganymede and Callisto, although rich in water, retain the color of geological rocks almost unchanged. Not only will metals not be dispelled there, but even, on the contrary, under the influence of the "solar wind" they are restored to a native state.

The same phenomenon was recorded on the surface of the moon. One more condition is necessary for the oxidation of iron. Which? The answer to this question can be found on earth.

Nowadays, thick red dust is cursed by drivers of dirt roads in Africa, India, and Australia. And in previous geological epochs, when the climate was largely warm, there were red flowers on all continents. But they appeared only after there was a lot of free oxygen in the atmosphere.

Oxygen is a sure sign of life. All 1200 trillion tons of this gas were produced on our planet by plants. By the way, it will take them about 4,000 years to renew this amount.

On the photographs taken by spacecraft, one can clearly see that the thickness of the so-called red flowers on the slopes of the Martian canyons reaches several kilometers at times.

Meanwhile, calculations showed that 500 trillion tons of oxygen would be needed to form a “red crust” there, only a hundred meters thick. And considering that the surface of Mars is only 28% of the surface of our planet, this corresponds to 3,200 trillion tons for the Earth. Obviously, only very abundant vegetation could create such an oxygenated atmosphere on Mars.

Now the focus of researchers studying the problems of extraterrestrial life is a meteorite found in Antarctica. This is a fragment of Martian rock, thrown towards us by some terrible explosion, and in it are the remains of primitive microorganisms. Their age is about three billion years.

The history of terrestrial life has shown that even in 20 million years, the blue-green algae of the Precambrian turned into mighty forests of the Carboniferous period. This means that there was plenty of time for the development of complex life forms on Mars. And the sacramental question of the lecturer from "Carnival Night" must be answered: "There was definitely life on Mars."

Why is she not now? What could happen?

The answer will be prompted by a "small" feature of the Martian soil. The fact is that, unlike the red flowers of the Earth, the rocks of the "Red Planet" are magnetic! This is due to the fact that in the red dust of our planet there is a lot of the mineral hematite (non-magnetic iron oxide), and in the sands of Mars rare maghemite prevails on Earth. With the same chemical composition, they have completely different crystal structure and physical properties.

In our country, magnetic iron oxide is obtained artificially in factories by calcining iron hydroxide at a temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius. This is how a sound carrier for tapes is made. Natural magsmit is unsuitable for this - it easily demagnetizes when the temperature rises.

During expeditions in Eastern Siberia, A. Portnov discovered that the rivers there washed out a huge amount of maghemite from ancient deposits with an unusual feature - when heated, this substance did not lose its magnetic properties. He named this mineral "stable maghemite". It is obvious that the substance arose during a powerful (as in a factory) calcination of red flowers. How could this happen in nature?

The answer to this riddle is hidden in a meteorite crater near the Popigai River. Smallpox with a diameter of more than 130 km in diameter was left in the Siberian taiga by a giant that fell to the ground 35 million years ago. It was one of the most significant catastrophes in the history of the Earth. Perhaps it was because of it that a strong change in the animal world occurred and the geological Paleogene period was replaced by the Neogene.

Although, this is an assumption. And here are the facts: from the thermal energy of the asteroid impact, up to 5,000 cubic kilometers of rocks melted. The unprecedented pressure that has arisen in the center of the Popigai crater is also evidenced by the fact that the world's largest diamond deposit is now enclosed there. Moreover, they are not cubic in structure, as in kimberlite pipes, but hexagonal, which appear only at a pressure of hundreds of thousands of atmospheres. It is a pity that the quality of parrot crystals is very low and cannot be used even for technical purposes.

This ancient catastrophe and the abundance of magnetic iron oxide around the Popigai crater are undoubtedly related. Apart from an asteroid impact, nothing could heat the rocks up to a thousand degrees over such a large area.

But this is only a modest illustration of the natural disasters that took place on the "Red Planet". Photographs of Mars show hundreds of such craters. It seems that it was a powerful and almost simultaneous asteroid attack.

One of the two small satellites of Mars, Phobos orbits at a distance of only 5920 km from the surface of Mars. Astronomers have calculated that Phobos has come close to the so-called Roche limit, when the planet's gravitational forces are capable of tearing the satellite apart. If that happens, Mars will be subject to yet another cosmic bombardment.

A. Portnov suggests that Mars had at least one more satellite. Maintaining the style (translated from Greek, the current satellites of Mars Phobos and Deimos are translated as “Fear” and “Horror”), he called it Thanatos (“Death”).

Several million years ago, Thanatos was torn apart by gravitational forces and collapsed down. The force of the blows was such that the red flowers of Mars were calcined and became magnetic, part of the Martian rock was generally thrown into space. One of these debris (with the remains of bacteria) and fell on the ice in Antarctica. Since the ice shell began to form there about 16 million years ago, the Martian catastrophe occurred not so long ago (in the geological sense, of course).

Powerful explosions not only heated the surface of Mars, but also destroyed the oxygen-rich atmosphere, turning it into plasma and throwing it into outer space ”Mars acquired a bloody color and became lifeless ...

So, according to the above opinion, there was life on Mars. Has it survived to this day? Scientists will be able to answer this question definitely only after research directly on the spot.

Enthusiasts of the existence of life on Mars do not lose heart. They believe that long-term scientific disputes will definitely be resolved in their favor. After all, far from all the mysteries of the planet Mars have been clarified. So, for example, it has not yet been possible to explain the periodic color change of some parts of the Red Planet, unexpected dust storms, a series of accidents with spacecraft heading to Mars, and, in the end, mysterious “flashes” ...

December 8, 1951 - Japanese astronomer Tsuneo Saeki saw through a telescope a bright point near the Martian lake Titonus, shone with a flickering light for 5 minutes. 1954 - the Japanese observed two such "flashes", in 1958 - four ... In 1994, the number of such outbreaks reached 400!

Experts say the mysterious glows don't look like explosions from falling meteorites or volcanic eruptions...

In short, the mystery remains. This means that there is still hope that people are not alone in the Universe and brothers in mind can live not somewhere in the distant constellation of TauKit, but very close to us.

“Whether there is life on Mars or not is still unknown to science,” this common aphorism comes from a good old Soviet film, it seems that it is no longer relevant. Recent studies of the Red Planet have clarified the situation. Scientists can say that now there is no life there, unless, of course, by this term we mean the presence of protein organisms. But what happened in the past? The soil drills produced by the rovers showed that once this planet had all the conditions to become "inhabited". But why is our neighbor in the solar system not as lucky as the Earth? And scientists have a plausible answer to this.

Ever since humanity invented the telescope, this mysterious planet has never ceased to excite human imagination. R. Bradbury, A. Tolstoy and other writers wrote works about "Martians". Riverbeds, seas and oceans, seen when approaching the surface of the Red Planet, it would seem, with all persuasiveness proved that with such a presence of water, life simply must be. It was only twenty years after being sent into space, when NASA launched a government program whose task was to fly to Mars in order to detect life there.

In 1976, two NASA spacecraft landed on the surface of the planet named after the god of war. The Vikings transmitted to Earth numerous photographs of lifeless brown-red deserts, as well as the results of analyzes of the atmosphere, soils and deeper rocks. Thus, it became clear why Mars appears to us as a shimmering red disk. The predominant soil on the planet is ferrous oxide. Such "rust" is also found on Earth. What does this discovery have to do with the question of the most direct: such soils are formed in the presence of water and free oxygen and in a warm climate.

But the chemical analysis of the planet's atmosphere disappointed people. Free oxygen in it turned out to be catastrophically small. If you answer the question of whether, based on air indicators, then the answer will be a categorical "no". But soils? Apparently, once oxygen was present here in the same quantities as on Earth. Plant life is required to produce it. And, most likely, it was once abundant on the Red Planet. This is evidenced by methane, also present in the Martian atmosphere.

Soil samples at the North and South Poles of the planet made the hearts of researchers tremble. In the ice caps, scientists have found some classical water ice. Taking into account the channels of huge water arteries, as well as the fact that the Red Planet is farther from the Sun than the Earth, so the climate there is much colder, we can say that there were conditions for the birth of bionics. This, of course, does not answer the question of whether there is life on Mars. Still, this information gives some hope.

In 1984, an event occurred that again made the broad masses become interested in whether there is life on Mars. The fact is that in Antarctica they found a 2-kilogram meteorite that fell from this planet. In 1996, it was investigated and ... found in it the remains of petrified primitive bacteria. The age of these microorganisms is three billion years. Despite the skepticism of many scientists, this find allows us to hope that there was still life on our closest neighbor planet. But she died as a result of attacks by giant asteroids.

Today, NASA announced that there is life on Mars, this is confirmed by photographs taken by the Viking spacecraft.

NASA reveals evidence of life on Mars...

The American space organization NASA provided photographs confirming the existence of life on the Red Planet -.

As already known, in the 70s, the Viking spacecraft took photographs of Mars, which included the silhouette of a humanoid creature. But experts quickly declared that this was not a creature, but simply an anomaly that occurred due to the Phobos satellite. According to experts, Phobos rotates very quickly in the orbit of Mars and because of this various anomalies are periodically created.

Is there life on Mars?

But ufologists were against the statement about the anomaly and said that the government is trying to hide traces of extraterrestrial life, so as not to raise a panic on Earth. After that, ufologists said that the silhouette on the Red Cobblestone was not an anomaly, but a clear sign of the existence of aliens, but no one believed them.

Following the appearance of the silhouette photograph, the machine took several more photographs, which captured what looked like a lizard, a frog, and a large bone. Experts immediately declared that these were not living beings, but only stone statues. Ufologists began to prove the opposite, that these are not stones, but living beings, and again no one began to listen to them.

NASA's Charles Bolden believes in extraterrestrial life...

And today, Charles Bolden, the head of AKA NASA, publicly stated that he believes in the existence of extraterrestrial life, and while at least it was not possible to meet aliens in person, this will still happen in the near future, because every day new evidence is being revealed to NASA.

As can be seen from the picture taken by the NASA space agency, there are living beings on the Red Planet - Mars. In this picture you can see something similar to a lizard.

As you can see from the photograph taken by the NASA space agency, there are living beings on Red Mars. In this picture you can see something similar to a frog.

As can be seen from the photograph, which was made by the American agency NASA, there are living beings on Mars. This picture shows something similar to the bone of an animal that recently died on the planet.