Mars, our planetary neighbor with a similar geologic history, has long been a fascination of Earthlings. Part of that is its proximity to Earth — meaning it's the most-visited planet (by robots, at least); and part of that is because of a number of hopeful yet faint signs that perhaps life once existed there. These hopeful signs run the gamut from a flower-shaped rock; to the presence of tiny electrical storms; to the ever-present possibility that liquid water exists somewhere on the Martian surface or perhaps once did.
"It's possible that life appears regularly in the universe. But the inability of life to maintain habitable conditions on the surface of the planet makes it go extinct very fast. Our experiment takes it even a step farther as it shows that even a very primitive biosphere can have a completely self-destructive effect.""
