Water on Mars is probably too cold and salty for life as we know it

Martian landscape

Mars is an unfriendly place

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

There are certain areas on Mars where we don’t dare tread. NASA forbids spacecraft from visiting spots that possibly host liquid water where life might be able to thrive, for fear of contaminating Mars with Earth microbes. But an analysis of the salty liquids on Mars suggests we needn’t worry, because life as we know it would be unable to exist anywhere on the Martian surface.

Edgard Rivera-Valentín at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas and his colleagues used maps of the temperature and relative humidity across …

source: newscientist.com