Could life have formed on Mars?

By Steve Hopkinson

Museum geologists Dr Joe Michalski and Dr Robin Armstrong investigate Iceland's volcanic landscape, and ask whether life could have formed under similar conditions on Mars.

Join Dr Michalski and Dr Armstrong as they investigate the volcanic geology of Iceland's central highlands and relate their findings to images of the area taken from orbit, which show vast mineral deposits on the surface. Iceland's highlands represent the kind of environment where microbes could have originally formed or evolved on early Earth. The discovery of similar surface deposits in remote sensing images of Mars raises the intriguing possibility that the conditions for life are present on the red planet.