THE he little fella continues to retain our undiminished, undivided attention, although it is yet a small thing among bigger, massive giants, it is not overawed by them one bit. In fact, chugging along merrily on its long, circular journey around the shepherd star, Sun, Mars takes a good care of its tiny but formidable family of moons that appear to have come from deep space and got trapped into the influential grip of the little fella’s gravitational field.

We already know that these moons are most unlike the moon that we are familiar with, they are not round or circular but flat and peppered; pockmarked and cratered all over, craters having been caused by repeated collisions over the last couple of billions of years. For they are not the original creation of the Solar System but came to be captured by the little giant much later when they strayed from their path among asteroids and, per force, adopted a new career.

So much has been said about the little fella, yet so much more remains to be said. Let us continue our story. There are two main issues left: firstly, some of the salient features of the planet, and secondly, what are, or were the chances of life on it once upon a time.

We are aware that the little fella has two very prominent poles popularly known as the North and the South Poles. Each is covered with ice — some of it is water ice, the rest is permafrost, i.e. permanent frost. The ever-present reddish dust is on account of iron oxides in the soil. In any case, in the event of too much dust pervading in the atmosphere it will take on a reddish tinge. The air is 95 per cent carbon dioxide with traces of nitrogen and argon. Almost no water vapour, no oxygen at all. It has very thin atmosphere which cannot provide enough pressure to prevent whatever little water from boiling away into space. This factor alone has contributed to keep the planet dry.

Gasses in the Martian atmosphere were “out gassed” as such, and also those massive amounts present in the interior were lost into space. Since the planet kept moving, the lost gasses were never recovered and were lost forever. One major factor was the solar wind. With no or little atmosphere to protect it from the lethal, incessant solar wind, any benign items remained unassisted as far as any origin, or proliferation of life is concerned. That is, any condition friendly to life vanished as soon as it made an appearance.

Now, you will wonder what out gassing is. When planets form, these are hot and fluid. As they cool — over the first billion years or more — a lot of action takes place in the core and mantle or their interior (inside the planet, that is). This cooling leads to squeezing on a large scale and release of forces. Water and several chemicals may be the outcome.

It is believed by several scientists that water on planet Earth, and petroleum is the outcome of this process of squeezing of the interior. These being lighter elements, floated upward to be discovered and put into use a couple of billion years later by humanity. More about this strange phenomenon later on.

The permafrost on the poles of the little fella is strange too. During Martian summer (yes, Mars has all those seasons we have here on the Earth, only less intense) the bodies of ice expand and this factor alone, among other factors, has given credence to the suspicion that Martians dig canals to make use of the available resources to grow crops for their dwindling sustenance. This belief, however, no longer holds any truth.

But it is quite interesting for a planet to have poles straddling with ice or snow. Once this was discovered, the little fella was immediately likened, and equated with planet Earth. Yet it took a century or more for this bubble of erroneously held belief to be burst.

Man has forever looked up and wondered whether or not there is life on those steely dots called stars and planets. Soon he began to assume that there is life like himself elsewhere in whatever portion of the universe visible to him. This was one of countless erroneously held beliefs he suffered from. It would take hundreds of years of study and observation of biological phenomena, as well as species of all kinds to reach a conclusion on what life is in the first place.

The story of life is altogether different from what our ancestors thought.

Whatever we ingest, liquids included, enters our system through veins, arteries and capillaries. Once broken into various constituents and carried by blood streams, it is transported to the body and the waiting cells. For every single function that body performs there are a separate set of cells that are a world unto themselves. These cells, numbering some one trillion, remain with us till our dying day.

Of course the cells come and go, and new ones take their place. Every once in a few years we have a new set of cells replacing the old ones. These go through a change or metamorphoses effortlessly. The cycle continues; when the cycle of procreation eventually comes to a stop that is when death occurs.

It appears naturally cyclic. The cycle goes through the bodies of trillions of people (humans), animals and flora of all kinds, simultaneously, but independent of each other. But how did it start? And where did it start? Which country or place of all should take the credit for starting it all? Tough questions but there must be answers to some, if not all these questions.

Because it will take a sustained discussion to provide satisfactory answers to these questions, why not keep it for the next issue?

The writer is a professional astronomer and a former head of PIA Planetaria. He can be reached at astronomerpreone@hotmail.com