Did mars once had life , when it was closer to sun or did it not because the sun as a star was younger then?

Ronald 7

There is one train of thought In that about 2. 8 billions of year ago Mars would have had water once on It Mars seems to have had a Major impact around that time which would have blown the water and any atmosphere that was with it off the Planet And left it the way it is unfortunately The crater that was left smoothed to become the Tharisis Plain which is as big as Texas That could explain How Mars got where it is and its probable lack of Mass

poldi2

There is no evidence Mars was closer to the sun. And there is no evidence so far that there is or was life on Mars.

Davros

It's actually the case that younger stars are cooler and dimmer. The Sun was something like 30% less luminous in the first billion years of the solar system. Stars grow hotter with age as their cores burn through the available hydrogen and gravity tighten's its grip. On the face of it you would have expected Mars to be colder than it was today. But several things about Mars' environment were different back then. Originally it had a magnetic field like the Earth, which prevented the solar wind from stripping away the atmosphere. When the magnetosphere faded and died around 4 billion years ago, the atmosphere slowly started to be ripped away, until after hundreds of millions of years it became like it is today, a thin wisp of air a mere 100th the pressure of that on Earth. But in those earlier years the Martian atmosphere was thick, fed by volcanic activity and frequent bombardment from asteroids and comets. It was composed mostly of CO2 with further components of methane and water vapour, all strong greenhouse gases which readily trapped the sun's heat. The thickness of this early atmosphere allowed rivers, lakes and seas of water to form on the Martian surface and for a short time was probably a much more hospitable environment for life to form than even Earth of that period was. Despite all this, we simply don't know if early Mars had life. It had the right ingredients, it had the right conditions and it had the time needed to do it. BUT just because something can occur, it doesn't follow that it must occur. It's also just as likely (if not more so) that no life ever occurred on Mars and the planet has always been completely sterile. It remains a question we don't have answers to. Did life never happen? Did it happen and then all die out, or is it still there, ticking away beneath the surface in the Martian rocks and aquifers? That is why so many recent robotic missions to Mars are being sent in an attempt to get answers to these questions. We might be lucky enough to have them answered in our lifetime.

Jeffrey K

Mars was never closer to the sun. But it was warmer long ago because it had a thicker atmosphere that held in the heat like a greenhouse. Nobody knows if life evolved on Mars. It is possible. That is why NASA is so interested in Mars.

Jim

The Sun is getting larger as it ages. Mars may have been suitable for life when it had more of an atmosphere and a stronger greenhouse effect, especially if the effect of carbon dioxide was amplified by water vapor, as on Earth.

Chris Ancor

Yes, it still has.

Clive

Nobody knows. Maybe it did. But nobody knows. Yet.

Henry

No, it's always been a light at the firmament.