London, Dec 12: A top UK space scientist Dr. John Murray has said that Mars could be lurking with killer aliens lying frozen beneath its surface.
He believes that bringing them to Earth will be catastrophic, as they will wipe out humanity.
Now Dr. Murray, who is also UK lead scientist with Europe’s Mars Express mission, has said he has overwhelming evidence of the life surviving in the frozen ocean near its equator, where simple life could thrive as microbes.
Prospects for life on Mars were boosted last week by NASA’s discovery of running water on the Red Planet, reports The Sun.
Dr. Murray believes the alien life-form is all lying in a dormant state. As such, a rocket should be used to blast a crater into ice floes in the region — named Elysium — allowing access to the aliens and water should be sprinkled on the dormant creatures to revive them.
“Then we could land a follow-up probe to scoop up the soil, put it under a microscope and add water,” he said.
However, the danger was in bringing them to Earth, he said.
“Both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) plan to bring samples of Mars 48 million miles back to Earth in the next decade to be studied in a lab. That is where the danger lies,” he said.
“It is going to be extremely primitive life. We are talking about bacteria. The only danger is if we brought it back and it escaped, we could have a War Of The Worlds situation,” he added.
“Earth bacteria killed the invading Martians in that. The Martians brought to us could kill off humans. We’d best have a good look at things on Mars before bringing anything back,” he said. (ANI)