A microbe nicknamed 'Conan the Bacterium' has what it takes to live on Mars.
, lying dormant beneath the surface, for 280 million years, new research has shown. The findings increase the probability that microbial life could still exist on the Red Planet., nicknamed"Conan the Bacterium," is one of the world's toughest microbes, capable of surviving in radiation strong enough to kill any other known life-form.
Conan the Bacterium was the clear winner. The researchers found that Conan the Bacterium could absorb as much as 28,000 times more radiation than what a human can survive. This measurement allowed Daly's team to estimate how long the microbe could survive at different depths on Mars. Previous experiments, in which Conan the Bacterium had been suspended in liquid water and subjected to radiation like that found on Mars, had indicated that the microbe could survive below the surface of Mars for 1.2 million years.
However, the new tests, in which the microbe was frozen and dried out to mimic the cold and dry conditions on Mars, suggested that Conan the Bacterium would be able to survive 280 million years on Mars if buried at a depth of 33 feet. This lifespan is reduced to 1.5 million years if buried just 4 inches below the surface, and just a few hours on the surface, which is bathed in ultraviolet light.
Mars' environment 280 million years ago was pretty much the same as it is now — cold and dry — and you have to go back much further to find a time when it was warmer and wet and might have allowed hypothetical Mars life to establish itself in the first place. Daly acknowledges this complication, but thinks there are ways life could have found environments in which to proliferate since Mars' dramatic climate change.