BBC Focus Magazine

[MikeG]

Weve discussed this in the past, but couldnt find the thread, so Im reposting. We had discussed how long Mars may have held water on the surface before disappearing. This extract from Time mentions a period of 1 Billion years (a previous article we had referenced wasn't that clear on the matter). Although Time isn't a scientific magazine, I tend to trust it as a source, even though some of its contributors have been outed as plagiarizers.

Even if nothing is living there now, the one billion years Mars is thought to have been wet would have been sufficient for life to have emerged and briefly thrived. Microbial fossils and other organic remains may still be there to mark its passing.

http://science.time.com/2012/08/09/what ... and-earth/

[M Paul Lloyd]

Well if the surface features of Mars, which show what appears to be water erosion, are any indication then it was really very wet, possibly as wet, in relative terms, as the early Earth.

It does seem likely, based on previous data that it was much wetter and for far longer than once though...
However the planets small mass meant that any surface water was doomed to boil away very quickly and although this may have taken a billion ...... and I'm presuming thats an American billion or 1,000,000,000 years for this to happen I think it would make it difficult for life to thrive plus those early Martian seas may have been a highly toxic solution of various metals and salts and although life can get by in such environments on Earth I'm not entirely convinced that such conditions are what you might call ideal for life to actually evolve.

But that doesn't mean to say that it didn't evolve, its just in what numbers and for how long and, more importantly did it escape underground and still clings on in the Martian interior?