Life on Mars killed off by Martians? Shocking study says so

For years, the word ‘Martian’ has been a part of our vocabulary. The word simply means forms of life on the planet Mars. But the mainstream nature of the word, unlike Venutian (belonging to Venus) or Mercurian (belonging to Mercury) highlights how people on Earth have always believed in the possibility that life exists on Mars. And while NASA has not found any evidence of life existing at present, it has found evidence for microbial life on Mars that existed millions of years ago. And as scientists try to find out more about the life that existed on Mars, a new study has made a shocking claim. It says that the life of Mars was ended by the first organisms that appeared on the red planet. Read on to know more.

The study was published in the journal Nature and focused on ‘Early Mars habitability and global cooling’. But in its process, the study also made some big claims. One of them was that the early microbes that existed on the planet altered its atmosphere to an extent that it caused the end of all life on the red planet.

Study claims early Martians killed off all life on Mars

It is a future that has been predicted by many environmentalists for the Earth with the rise of global warming and increasing climate change. However, this predicament for Earth has been caused by humans which were created as an accident as multicellular animals with high intelligence. It is strange to think that unicellular life on Mars was capable of creating such an inhospitable environment to cause their own demise.

But that is what Boris Sauterey, a postdoctoral researcher at Sorbonne University, Paris and the lead author of the study proposes. In a statement reported by The Sun, he said, “Life – even simple life, like microbes – might actually commonly cause its own demise”.

So, how did it happen? According to the study, around 4 billion years ago, Mars was a flourishing planet with liquid water and habitable conditions. And these conditions would have given rise to microbes that consumed hydrogen and produced methane. As these organisms grew and swarmed the planet, the planet lost its precious hydrogen and began filling up with methane.

“Early Mars' presumably moist, warm climate, however, would have been jeopardized by so much hydrogen sucked out of the thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere," Sauterey said. The study postulates that this would have caused the planet’s temperature to drop by almost 200 degrees Celsius. And these two factors would have resulted in the untimely demise of the early life on Mars.

It should be noted that the findings of the study have not been confirmed to be the truth due to lack of evidence. NASA Perseverance rover has been sent to the planet to collect evidence around these events and find out if life ever existed on the planet and if it did, what exactly happened to it.