Life on Mars

Major thanks to Brent, who gave me the heads up to this (and has more on it too).

A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.

The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed.

What Stoker and Lemke have found, according to several attendees of the private meeting, is not direct proof of life on Mars, but methane signatures and other signs of possible biological activity remarkably similar to those recently discovered in caves here on Earth.

Ok, so when they say evidence, it's not direct but inferred. I'm ok with that, because it's orders of magnitude more likely than ever discovering martian lichen or higher life forms.

Go read the article, because like Mars, there's a lot more to this story than what first meets the eye.