Frozen Bacterium hints life on Mars

The discovery that a life form, froze on Earth some 30,000 years ago, was apparently alive as well as the latest research released from the European Space Agency make it likely that life could be found on Mars.

The organism -- a bacterium dubbed Carnobacterium pleistocenium -- probably flourished in the Pleistocene Age, along with woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, according to the report of Reuters.

Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama discovered the bacterium near the town of Fox, Alaska, in a tunnel drilled through permafrost -- a mix of permanently frozen ice, soil and rock -- that is kept at a constant temperature of 24.8 degrees F (minus 4 degrees C).

When he looked at a small sample of this bacteria-laden ice under a microscope, "These bacteria that had just thawed out of the ice ... were swimming around. The instant the ice melted, they started swimming. They were alive ... but they had been frozen for over 30,000 years." Hoover was quoted as saying by Reuters.

The European Space Agency announced this week that images transmited by a European space probe reveal the existence of a sea of ice close to the equator of Mars, thus the chances of present microscopic life have become greater.

Source: Xinhua/agencies