10 Places Most Likely To Harbour Alien Life

Due to the fact that, relatively speaking, Mars is just right next door, we have managed to find out more about this planet than any others in the solar system.

Although, so far, we haven't spied any alien civilisations waving back at us through our telescopes, scientists think that Mars displays evidence that it could once have been home to alien life.

Today, Mars is far too cold for liquid water to exist on its surface and its atmosphere is far too thin to be able to protect any potential life from the radiation of outer space. The red planet does have water ice on its surface, but it is locked up in the soil and the polar ice caps, rendering it unusable.

However, it is is thought that many years ago, Mars would have been a much nicer, much more Earth-like place to be. There is evidence to suggest that it once had a magnetic field that would have enabled it to maintain a thicker atmosphere, thus protecting it from solar radiation and trapping heat, allowing rivers and lakes of liquid water to run over its surface. 

These rivers and lakes could well have been home to ancient microbial life forms, before the strong solar wind blew the atmosphere right off of Mars, leaving it the cold and barren place it is today.

Even though it is unlikely that we'll discover life on Mars today, if we can confirm that it did at least once harbour alien life forms, it will prove once and for all that Earth is not the only place in the universe where living organisms can develop, essentially doubling the number of planets that we know to be or have been habitable.