Could there still be life, not on mars, but underneath Mars?

If we could use our civilization for a referance. Consider that life on the surface has become unbareable, where would our civilization go? Of course undergorund. Look at the cold war and the nubkers we built, that is our instinct.

Codger, is able to bring up a good point.

Just for a moment take evolution and place it into the account.

Say such a thing happened on Mars, that forced them to move underground. Just say they were advanced enough to build cities under the Earth. Following what we know of evolution it is possible within a few [hundred] thousand years they could evolve to being able to live underground and not above ground...

The guy who posted this thread does raise up an important question but not just on Mars on many planets we will find over the coming years...long after all of us have gone.

maybe we should send a deep drilling probe to the planets. Something that could penetrate and durably travel. I know the energy source would be a hurdle but, perhaps with some futuristic tech. like positrins, or nuclear isolation?

If we were faced with earth changes making it uninhabitable there are a few things that might happen. Yes, we might go underground. We may also look to go elsewhere. Travel takes on a different perspective when it's one way :-) If some us left and the rest died off there would be virtually no visible trace of our previous presence on the surface after a short while, relatively speaking. How many structures made by man can be found easily on the surface of this planet that are over 5,000 years old. As we destroy our atmosphere and the planet heats up, the water will eventually evaporate leaving the surface dry. Dry material, wind driven would abrade away anything and everything so that earth would look like... Hmmmm Mars?
Is it possible that some of us might move underground and stay underground. Sure. Is it probable that if we were underground that we would not continue to leave some sort of imprint visible on the surface? I don't know but I doubt it.

AnAbsoluteCreation, what about solar power?

I am sure that should be able to help, however I would expect us to do a mission to Mars with people before we even bother to dig and test. After all we are running out of Natural Resources on Earth - moon next, Mars after and then the rest of the solar system.

There could still be life on Mars but it will be most likely microbial, or at best some form of photosynthetic life like algae that exist on the surface. They could exist in sub-surface water sources.

But however this thread is in the Ancient & Lost Civilizations forum so I'm going to assume that you are talking about an advanced alien race living under Mars' surface. I find this highly unlikely. There is no evidence of alien presence anywhere in the solar system.

GoldEagle

As said before who's to say that anything on mars would be advanced as us or come to think of it anywhere... What if we are it the most advanced species in the universe and we are looking for something that will never come... dam hollywood making us think this way.

frankly who cares if there is life on mars, let us worry about spreading our own species across the stars first and worry about the aliens later if any

maybe we should send a deep drilling probe to the planets. Something that could penetrate and durably travel. I know the energy source would be a hurdle but, perhaps with some futuristic tech. like positrins, or nuclear isolation?

-- AnAbsoluteCreation

If that is ever done, I hope it will be sent to Europa...I think that has a much greater chance of harboring life than any other body in the solar system (besides earth of course). It's the only place we know of that currently has liquid water, which is buried under hundreds of feet of ice, and warmed by the (presumably) volcanic jets.

I have some more time to think about this thread and it won't leave my mind. If there was ever life on mars. There quite possibly could still be life there.

Mars (Greek: Ares) is the god of War. (An interesting side note: the Roman god Mars was a god of agriculture before becoming associated with the Greek Ares; those in favor of colonizing and terraforming Mars may prefer this symbolism.) The name of the month March derives from Mars.

Mars has been known since prehistoric times. Of course, it has been extensively studied with ground-based observatories. But even very large telescopes find Mars a difficult target, it's just too small. So we've never really studied traces of life yet (with all the solar bombardment due to lack of atmosphere they may never find any).

Viking 2 Landing Site

Pathfinder Landing Site


The first spacecraft to visit Mars was Mariner 4 in 1965. Several others followed including Mars 2, the first spacecraft to land on Mars and the two Viking landers in 1976. Ending a long 20 year hiatus, Mars Pathfinder landed successfully on Mars on 1997 July 4. In 2004 the Mars Expedition Rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity" landed on Mars sending back geologic data and many pictures; they are still operating after more than a year on Mars. Three Mars orbiters (Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Express) are also currently in operation.

Mars' orbit is significantly elliptical. One result of this is a temperature variation of about 30 C at the subsolar point between aphelion and perihelion. This has a major influence on Mars' climate. While the average temperature on Mars is about 218 K (-55 C, -67 F), Martian surface temperatures range widely from as little as 140 K (-133 C, -207 F) at the winter pole to almost 300 K (27 C, 80 F) on the day side during summer. (If you knew the climate shifts it could seem bareable)

Though Mars is much smaller than Earth, its surface area is about the same as the land surface area of Earth.
Olympus Mons
Mars has some of the most highly varied and interesting terrain of any of the terrestrial planets, some of it quite spectacular:

Olympus Mons: the largest mountain in the Solar System rising 24 km (78,000 ft.) above the surrounding plain. Its base is more than 500 km in diameter and is rimmed by a cliff 6 km (20,000 ft) high.
Tharsis: a huge bulge on the Martian surface that is about 4000 km across and 10 km high.
Valles Marineris: a system of canyons 4000 km long and from 2 to 7 km deep (top of page);
Hellas Planitia: an impact crater in the southern hemisphere over 6 km deep and 2000 km in diameter.
Much of the Martian surface is very old and cratered, but there are also much younger rift valleys, ridges, hills and plains. (None of this is visible in any detail with a telescope, even the Hubble Space Telescope; all this information comes from the spacecraft that we've sent to Mars.)

So if you stripped Earth of its water, it would look just as ragged, but bigger. I think it is almost naive to think that Mars had never sustained functioning life. Adaptation is a strong natural wonder. If I had to bet, I'd put $5 that if someone started digging the surface of the planet, we'd run into a stranger.