8 Things You Need To Know About NASA Finding Water On Mars

In fact there are a lot of scientists who think that the idea of life on Mars isn't such a new concept either. With a temperate climate, seasons and running water, microbial life developing on Mars is considered by some to be pretty much as likely as microbial life developing on Earth. 

In fact, it could well be the case that life of Mars would have been seeded at the same time it came to Earth, perhaps via the organic compounds we know can be found on asteroids. 

Mars got a good billion years or so before all of the water essentially boiled off, so perhaps it developed life in that time?

 Ancient Mars would have been a pretty cosy place for a microbe, so the question of whether there is life on Mars is similar to the question of whether there is water on Mars, you need to add that crucial little "still" into the equation.

Okay, maybe I'm being a bit miserable here, it would definitely be incredible to find contemporary life on the surface of Mars, but I think the point I'm trying to make here is that we are finding out, not that life is much hardier than we thought (and therefore likely to be more abundant in the rest of the inhospitable universe), but that Mars is more hospitable than we thought.