"If we were to go there and shove a probe a meter below the surface, you'd get a very different picture of heat flow," Brian Hynek of the University of Colorado at Boulder said, suggesting the mountain is probably still warm. The blackest depths of a volcano might not seem like the best place to go alien-hunting. But life on Earth has been found subsisting two miles down in the crust, and a mile beneath the ocean floor. So finding life a mile or so below Olympus Mons' lava flows is well within the realm of possibility, Hynek said. The flows may even act as a kind of insulating blanket, keeping water and heat in, and Mars' cold, corrosive surface conditions out. "It's the natural place I'd go first on an astrobiological expedition to Mars, given that it's the place where volcanism is strongest and youngest on the planet," McGovern said. "And you want to be looking wherever it's hot." Related Links: |
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