Life on Mars? Don't bet on it, says Smithsonian geologist

Life on Mars? Forget about it, according to geologist Bob Craddock.

“If there was life on Mars, we shouldn’t have to look this hard for it,” said Craddock, a 1985 University of Georgia graduate who’s now with the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies.

That’s not counting possible life introduced in the modern era by the Soviet Union, which did not wash its spacecraft before sending them to explore the red planet, he said.

The idea that there might be life on Mars, or might have been in the distant past, has gripped the public imagination for more than a century, Craddock said last week in a talk in UGA’s Geography and Geology Building.

Peering through 19th-century telescopes, Percival Lowell and other early astronomers saw what looked like intelligently designed canals and dark areas that appeared to wax and wane with the seasons — what it might look like if astronomers far from Earth could see forests changing with the passage of seasons here, they imagined.

Lowell’s canals might be the last vestiges of an ancient civilization that dried up along with its planetary water supply, he thought, and the notion inspired some of the great science fiction movies, including H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” and Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles.”

But those canals were created by erosional forces, and mission after mission to Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor has failed to come up with any evidence of life there, he said.

Some scientists have suggested looking for Martian life in the planet’s hottest, coldest or darkest environments, where so-called “extremophiles” might lurk — creatures that have adapted to living in extreme environments, like bacteria on earth that live in hot geysers.

But Mars’ environment is extreme everywhere, the geologist said.

But even though the prospects are dim for finding life, continued exploration of Mars is important, Craddock said.

Studying Mars’ geology and environment can help us understand how life began on Earth billions of years ago, he said.