An increasingly common question that I get asked these days: "Are there microbes on Mars?"
I think The Martian got people thinking. I finally saw the movie and realized why people keep asking me that question. They see the hostile environment of Mars, they see the barren LEO landscape, they see that I am able to prove there is life on LEO, so intuitively they ask me if there is life on Mars! And I say, yes. Of course this is a matter of personal opinion with no scientific proof to back up what I am saying but I do firmly believe that it is only a matter of time before we find life on mars, and that life is going to be microbial. This particular paper, Geomicrobiology: Low Life puts my thoughts very succintly "microbes turn up nearly everywhere that scientists search for them".
This reminds of this TED talk by Nathalie Cabrol on how Mars might hold the secret to the origin of life. And while we may have been able to send probes to Mars, a serious question is how do we ensure that we do not 'contaminate' Mars with Earth microbes. That would not really serve our purpose of finding life on another planet! We still need to figure out a way to sample aseptically from Mars, that is to say, we pick up microbes that are actually from Mars and not those sticking to the probe that we sent from Earth! And then there is this research which was conducted on International Space Station and reports that bacteria could survive space travel! So we really are looking at a resilient lot so to speak. And this makes me appreciate the power of life at the molecular level!
Our quest to understand the natural world around us is formidable to say the least. But it is exciting, challenging, exhiliarating, and it is more than being a scientist in lab working on our experiments. And this is what makes me like my work. I pretty much went blindfold into the system I am working with. With absolutely no visible sign of life on LEO, I am able to see life and appreciate the intricacies of biological processes, in conjunction with the physcial world! It is another thing that now I look for signs of bacterial life everywhere I go!
For the love of microbes and the insights we gain from them!