“Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,” said Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif.”

If all complex life on Earth were to become extinct (e.g. because of a runaway greenhouse effect a la Venus or the Earth gradually drifting out of the habitable zone (unlikely but WTH)) would oil and coal remain as evidence of it’s existance?

Would coal or oil remain for billions of years?

IOW: could it be that Mars had complex life in the distant past and coal and oil was created by these biological processes and then the Martian life massively devolved or became extinct for some reason?

From what I know about extremophiles on Earth, “life” is pretty tenacious, so if there was life at some point on Mars it would probably still be there.

Still, life on Mars would be huge – it would change everything.

Much excitement!