Life on Mars: Scientist suggests sending microbes to the Red Planet to terraform Mars – Express.co.uk

Terraforming the Red Planet should be done ahead of mankinds visit to Mars to help establish a better living environment on the barren plane, biological scientist has claimed. Terraforming is the process of transforming a planet to make it more similar to Earths conditions and thus more habitable for humans. Dr Jose Lopez, a professor at Nova Southeastern Universitys (NSU) Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography, has said that microbes which helped make Earth a suitable place for living could also work on Mars.

Dr Lopez said: Life as we know it cannot exist without beneficial microorganisms.

They are here on our planet and help define symbiotic associations - the living together of multiple organisms to create a greater whole.

To survive on a barren (and as far as all voyages to date tell us) sterile planets, we will have to take beneficial microbes with us.

This will take time to prepare, discern and we are not advocating a rush to inoculate, but only after rigorous, systematic research on Earth.

In a paper titled Space Colonization Beyond Earth with Microbes First, which was published in the journal FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Dr Lopez argued that sending microbes first will save humanity money, can be life-sustaining and boost microbiological understanding.

However, he does concede that a lot more research will need to be done.

Dr Lopez continued: Life on earth started with relatively simple microorganisms which have the capacity to adapt and evolve to extreme conditions, which defined earths habitats in the ancient past.

Cyanobacteria for example provided most of the oxygen we now breath more than two billion years ago.

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Life on Mars: Scientist suggests sending microbes to the Red Planet to terraform Mars - Express.co.uk