Are_We_Alone

Are We Alone The prospects of finding life elsewhere in the Solar System Thirteen thousand years ago, a dazzling meteor flashed into existence in the skies above Antarctica. As it ploughed earthwards, the heat of its fall ripped apart the atoms of the air, leaving behind a brilliant trail that lit up the icy landscape. It would have made a beautiful sight, if anybody had been there to see it. The meteor's surface melted, then vapourised, and as the rocky ball tore towards the ground it slowly shrank. Ordinarily such an object would have been completely destroyed long before making contact with our planet's surface, but this one was not. A small chunk - about two kilograms of it - survived the fall, and lay there, hot and steaming, on the cold Antarctic ice. Most meteorites that are found on Earth are simply interplanetary debris - small pieces of junk left over from the violent formation of our Solar System, four and half billion years ago. But this particular meteorite was special. It had come from Mars, blasted from its home planet fifteen million years ago by a cosmic impact even more spectacular than the one in which it fell to Earth. This potato-shaped mars, life, earth, planet, surface, one, been, years, living, martian, water, even, solar, similar, carbon, system, scientists, moon, found, compounds, atmosphere, organic, out, materials, very, titan, meteorite, however, europa, chemical, within, organism, molecules, just, formed