D32, a few pointers:
The interior of Mars holds vast reservoirs of water, with some spots apparently as wet as Earth's innards, scientists say.
http://www.huffingtonpos...ts-earth_n_1621364.html
Water on Mars is much less abundant than it is on Earth, at least in its liquid and gaseous states of matter. Most of the water known is locked in the cryosphere (permafrost and polar caps), and there are no bodies of liquid water which could create a hydrosphere. Only a small amount of water vapor is present in the atmosphere.
Read this. Very interesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars
Methanococcus jannaschii, a single-celled micro-organism, needs these conditions to survive; it grows best at 85°C (185°F), and lives by taking energy from the hot spring water as it mixes with the ice-cold sea water around it. This way of life is very different from the familiar kinds of life — plants that use light and carbon dioxide from the air, or animals that eat plants or other animals. The Methanococcus way of life shows how diverse and robust life can be, and that life can persist in the worst environments Earth has to offer. Perhaps life could also persist and thrive in martian environments. One job in our future studies of Mars is to learn whether hot springs like this one, or hot springs underground, ever existed on Mars.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/.../marslife/slide_30.html
EXTREMOPHILES
http://www.nss.org/adast...olume14/rothschild.html
The European Space Agency has discovered that lichens can survive unprotected in space. In an experiment led by Leopoldo Sancho from the Complutense University of Madrid, two species of lichen – Rhizocarpon geographicum and Xanthoria elegans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen
An extremophile is an organism adapted to unusual limits of one or more abiotic factors in the environment. Some of the extreme conditions are temperature, pH, high salinity, high levels of radiation and high pressure. Note that some of these factors, such as temperature and pH, have two extrema. Most extremophiles are micro-organisms such as bacteria and archaea, since higher organisms generally are less adaptive to wide variations from the norm in environmental conditions. Upper limits of existence for carbon based lifeforms appear to be about 150 degrees Celsius, based upon inherent thermal stabilities of amino acids and polypeptides essential to DNA manufacture. In some cases extremophile metabolism thrives on the exotic variation in environmental conditions; in other situations, there is adaptive behavior such as metabolic diapause (cryptobiosis) or desiccation (endosphore formation).
Extremophiles are thought to have been some of the earliest lifeforms on earth, since such early organisms would have to be adapted to harsh conditions, at least in comparison to present day environments. Extremophiles may exist on other bodies in the solar system, such as Jupiter's moon Europa or on Mars. Some microorganism extremophiles have shown industrial potential, such as the ability to remove sulfur compounds from crude oil at high temperatures
http://www.eoearth.org/a...xtremophile?topic=74530
Biologists have embarked on a project to engineer plants that could withstand the harsh environment of Mars, using genes from hardy bacteria that thrive around deep-sea vents on Earth.
http://www.newscientist....put-plants-on-mars.html
There was also a very nice documentary but I can't remember its name. It was about extremophiles and was showing how some plants surviving on extremely toxic environments in the absence of what we consider (considered?) essential for life. Siezi kumbuka jina though
GOD BLESS YOUR LIFE