Tires Lagoon in central Spain dried up over 20 years, and by 2015 it was completely dry, its barren terrain reminiscent of the arid Martian plains. The similarity turned out to be potentially useful. Researchers are watching the newly dead microbial inhabitants of lagoons to learn what happened to hypothetical life on Mars when salt lakes dried up billions of years ago.
“The key message is that if life existed on Mars when it had liquid water on its surface, the global drying up of Mars does not necessarily mean that life has disappeared forever. That’s it,” says astrobiologist Alberto G. Verren. Spanish Center for Astrobiology in Madrid.
Analyze microorganisms in 2002 and 2021 Tires soil samples for research scientific report, Faren and his colleagues found that single-celled organisms called prokaryotes are adapted to thrive in extremely dry sediments. These results suggest that microbes that arose in wet conditions may have survived the drying of Mars. The researchers also measured trace amounts of fatty acids, called lipids, that form in cell membranes from the 2021 samples, suggesting that these long-lasting molecules make good targets for searching for traces of pre-life on other planets. confirmed to be
Astrobiologists often study extreme terrestrial environments that may resemble other planets. But the Tirez team says the new study shows for the first time a long-term ‘time analogue’ of environmental change in another world. Researchers are interested in the lagoon’s high salinity as a proxy for Jupiter’s moon Europa, and some have hypothesized that life might exist there. But in 2020, Faren came up with the idea of using decades of lagoon data to learn about early lakes on Mars instead.
Because this kind of research helps researchers understand distant worlds, it can also be useful in our immediate surroundings. The time analogue “has raised an interesting idea that more needs to be explored to understand not only Mars, but our planet,” says SETI, which focuses on the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. said Natalie Cabrol, the lab’s chief scientist. Cabrol, who was not involved in the study, said there is a “critical need” for research into how fast the Earth’s biosphere is changing because of climate change.
Verren’s team is currently planning two new temporal analogue studies. First, Faren wants to measure how the Tyres microbes respond to water re-entering the lagoon once Spain’s long dry season is over. Second, he hopes to study ecological changes in polar environments where the rate of ice melt is accelerating and compare it to when Mars lost its surface ice. He believes studies like this will inspire other scientists to take advantage of environmental changes in their own research and learn more about life on and off Earth.
