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Comment by logicallee | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it a foregone conclusion that we'll bring some microbes over sooner or later? Don't we have lots that can thrive in that atmosphere, there's sunlight, etc. It just takes a few cells, why should we assume there will be 0 cells in all of Mars, even as we constantly send stuff there?

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There is natural exchange of material between earth and mars from large asteroid strikes. So - the question isn't really about cross contamination as we know that has happened at scale fairly recently, but really is there a functioning ecology that runs independently ?

The extreme radiation, extremely low pressure, extreme cold, anoxic atmosphere, soil toxicity, and almost total lack of humidity make it highly unlikely any earth bacteria could survive for long on the surface.

If there is life it is buried under metres of rock and/or ice, probably in areas of hydrothermal activity.

I'll just leave this here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans

The surface of Mars is very hostile to life.

I'm tempted to qualify your comment with a quote from Dr McCoy but I'd better not.

Is it though? Isn't our scientists' classification of life limited to what we have on Earth? What if there is even tinnier or other form of life on Mars? I am mostly asking because we already know of extremely small bacteria being able to survive after 32,000 years in ice on Earth. So what if something similar is there on Mars too?

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