"There may be a lot of worlds with bacterial life, but for complex life like on Earth, our moon helps," said Bernard Foing, project scientist with the European Space Agency's SMART-1 lunar probe, which spent 16 months orbiting the moon before its mission ended in September 2006. The moon also may have helped incubate life on Earth by influencing volcanism and plate tectonics, which recycled the planet's crust, Foing added. In contrast, "Mars is like a hot stove that's been covered with a lid," Foing said in an interview with Discovery News. "It can't move. On Earth, the crust is recycled." While there are other mechanisms for planets to end up with moons in their gravitational grasp, researchers doubt the physics would work for such a moon to end up orbiting a planet located in the zone necessary to support life, the so-called Goldilocks region that is neither too hot, nor too cold for life to exist. "There could be extreme forms of life that are very different from what we see today," Foing said. "Earth-life would be extremely rare." Related Links: |
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