Mars is generally thought to be a dry lifeless wasteland, however at one point it may have possessed an environment alike Earth's. This theory has provoked scientists to delve deeper; looking for signs of current or past life on Mars. The lack of any vegetation or other visible organisms on mars indicated that the only life that may be found would reside in the dirt of the red planet. Instead of referring to the matter covering the surface of mars as soil it is referred to as dirt; for this matter to be considered soil it would have to be proven to contain organic life. The dirt itself has remained undisturbed for an unknown amount of years longer than mankind could measure without a sample of Mars. If a sample were to be retrieved then it …show more content…
We carefully inserted the sterilized spoon into the N.A.S.A. ziplock bag obtaining approximately 12 gram sample of the dirt. This dirt was then transferred into a small dish where it was mixed with 10ml of distilled water to rehydrate the sample. The rehydration of the sample was intended to mimic the conditions found within the moist Mars craters. We hoped that somehow any bacteria or possibly algae would flow to the lowest part of the dish. From the lowest portion of the dish we used a sterilized unopened cotton swab to obtain a testing sample from the dish. This swab was then inserted into a glass graduated cylinder that had been cleaned using ethanol. The cylinder contained 2 ml of distilled water, we then dispensed that water into a clean petri dish containing agar jelly that contained 5% beef broth to provide the culture nutrients. We then placed that dish in an incubator set at 37* Celsius, which is the same temperature found inside of a human body. We replicated these steps again sterilizing everything to prepare another petri dish, and placed it in the incubator. For the control in our experiment we used no martian dirt; we only poured 2 ml of distilled water into a clean dish. We then inserted a clean swab into the dish, after which we put the swab into the graduated cylinder …show more content…
The dirt from Mars and the surface of the red planet may now be identified as soil due to life being present within it. This alone is a large enough discovery to prompt scientists to take a look deeper into the past of Mars and research different methods of possible terraformation of the planet far in the future. Our experiment not only proved the presence of this bacterial life on Mars, but proved the fact that algae still lives on the red planet. More thorough testing should be performed on the martian dirt to identify the exact types of bacteria and algae within the dish. This type of testing should be performed at a facility equipped with veteran microbiologists as staff, with horribly overpriced scientific devices that only the most prominent laboratories in the world posses. With the supplies and knowledge our group had access to and possessed we conducted our experiment in the best manner we could. Our group's assignment was simply to prove life within the soil, which we