More about the ancient advance life on Mars

More about the ancient advance life on Mars; indeed, in the very decade that the Space Age began, Willy Ley and Werner von Braun's The Exploration of Mars contained a haunting illustration by Chesley Bonestell of the ruins of a Martian temple. That dream, of finding the remnants of a long-dead race, quickly vanished as close-up pictures arrived in 1964 from the first successful Mars probe, Mariner 4, of a crater-strewn wilderness seemly not unlike that of our own Moon. However, in 1971, Mariner 9 brought renewed hope of finding past and even extant biological activity, with its images of what appeared to be dried-up river channels. Such was the revival of optimism that only a few weeks before the first Viking landing, Carl Sagan and Joshua Lederberg went so far as to suggest that: "Large organisms, possibly detectable by the Viking Lander cameras, are not only possible on Mars; they may be favored." In the event, nothing so spectacular was found, although the Viking results are still open to a variety of interpretations, both chemical and biological.

Recently released photos, seen at right, taken by MGS look quite like aerial photos of an Earth desert dotted with shrub growth. But these sand dunes are in the southern hemisphere of Mars. A Hungarian research team, which has been analyzing the photos (and other photos of the same area over time), has concluded that the black dots are indeed living organisms.

"Each spring," writes David Leonard in an article for Space.com, "[the Hungarians] report, 'gray fuzzy spots' appear in the bottom of the ice cover. By the middle of the first half of spring, these spots become darker, are bounded, and grow in size. By early summer defrosting, the naked dark soil of the dune is visible, and surrounded by a lighter ring. Year by year, the dark dune spots 'renew' on the same place with almost the same configuration, or 'constellation' of patches. This repeat action, the team asserts, strengthens their suggestion of fixed, biological causes of spot formation."

The Hungarian scientists conclude that this strongly suggests the life cycle of some kind of plant life.

NASA and its associated research teams don't agree with this conclusion. Their theory is that the dark spots are "the result of springtime defrosting process on Mars, not signs of biology." A somewhat less dismissive opinion from Bruce Jakosky, a Mars researcher at the University of Colorado in Boulder, states that the conclusion for Martian biology is "premature... when other, simpler processes have not been ruled out."

Another controversial photo, shown above, reveals much larger forms that look like spreading trees as seen from above. No less a personage than respected author Arthur C. Clarke opined that they resemble Earth's Banyan trees. He too noted that these forms appear to change with the seasons, growing with the warmth and increased sunlight of Mars's spring season, just as vegetation would. But NASA has likewise explained these shapes as some kind of freezing/defrosting phenomenon or a part of the "bizarre geology" of Mars.