Pacific 'baby island' is natural lab to study Mars

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http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42169466

Pacific 'baby island' is natural lab to study Mars

By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent, New Orleans

11 December 2017

It is one of Earth's newest landforms and it could just tell us where to look for evidence of life on Mars. The tongue-twisting volcanic island of Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai exploded out of the Pacific Ocean in 2015, and its shape has been evolving ever since as it has been lashed and bashed by waves.

Scientists are watching this slow erosion very closely. They think they see the remnants of many such water-birthed islands on the Red Planet. If that is true, it is really intriguing. On Earth, we know that wherever you get submarine volcanic processes, you also very often get conditions that support microbial communities.

What the researchers see occurring at Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH) therefore may be a kind of template to help them understand better the water environment on early Mars and, by extension, whether the conditions might also have been favourable for the initiation of simple life.
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Water and time are essential ingredients for life. So too are an energy source and a supply of nutrients. On Earth, all these conditions are found at volcanic vents on the ocean floor. Microbial communities build up around the mineral-rich waters that gush from cracks in hot rock. And this is one of the reasons why scientists are tasking satellites now to look for evidence of similar, past activity on the Red Planet.

Mars is currently bone dry but it was not always that way, and if it had volcanic systems similar to HTHH or Surtsey then their remains could well be among the best places to send a rover to search for signs of preserved biology.
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