Lava Coils on Mars Signs of Life?
Hundreds of lava spirals on Mars have many wondering if they are indications of life on the planet. The discovery marks the first time lava flows have been seen on a planet other than Earth.
"I was quite surprised and puzzled when I first saw the coils," graduate student Andrew Ryan told Fox News. Indeed, as these spirals have never been visible to scientists before now.
Previously, scientists thought that flows were created by giant ice "rafts." The new images, however, propose something entirely different.
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"There are no known mechanisms to naturally produce spiral patterns in ice-rich environments on the scale and frequency observed in our study area," Ryan and Phillip Christensen wrote in a new article for the journal "Science."
"Everything that we have observed in Athabasca Valles [in Hawaii] can be formed by lava. Although you could attribute certain features to ice, the lava coils indicate that this is not the case," Ryan told National Geographic.
With the similarities between Earth and Mars growing, do scientists think that there is life on the planet?
"If this really is the remains of a large inland sea, that's where you're going to find life, if there is any there," said John Murray of the Department of Earth Sciences at the Open University in the U.K.
"I think that there are so many features here that it's difficult to explain them other than [the theory] that this was essentially water that froze and has since sublimated away. There is no lava that behaves in so many different ways," Murray explained, debunking Ryan's theory of lava flow.
"The only way you can [form coils] really is to have a liquid that's extremely mobile and fluid-water or something like water," he argued.
Murray and Ryan also differ when it comes to whether there is life on Mars. While Murray has stated that he believes ice, water, are proof that there could be life on the planet, Ryan told National Geographic that the planet is better for the study of "volcanic and geologic history."
"I don't believe it would be a very good place to search for life," he explained.
