Scientist: "Mars is habitable today", but what know The Vatican about extraterrestrial life?

While Mars was likely a more hospitable place in its wetter, warmer past, the Red Planet may still be capable of supporting microbial life today, some scientists say.

Ongoing research in Mars-like places such as Antarctica and Chile's Atacama Desert shows that microbes can eke out a living in extremely cold and dry environments, several researchers stressed at "The Present-Day Habitability of Mars" conference held here at the University of California Los Angeles this month.

And not all parts of the red planet's surface may be arid currently - at least not all the time. Evidence is building that liquid water might flow seasonally at some Martian sites, potentially providing a haven for life as we know it.

"We certainly can't rule out the possibility that it's habitable today," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for the HiRise camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.

McEwen discussed some intriguing observations by HiRise, which suggest that briny water may flow down steep Martian slopes during the local spring and summer. Sixteen such sites have been identified to date, mostly on the slopes of the huge Valles Marineris canyon complex, McEwen said. The tracks seem to repeat seasonally as the syrupy fluids descend along weather-worn pathways.

While the brines may originate underground, Caltech's Edwin Kite noted, there is an increasing suspicion that a process known as deliquescence — in which moisture present in the atmosphere is gathered by compounds on the ground, allowing it to become a liquid — may be responsible. Read more

What know The Vatican about extraterrestrial life?

While researchers suggest that microbial life on Mars is possible, in 2008, the Vatican already confirmed that life on Mars and in outer space cannot be ruled out.

In 2008, The Pope's chief astronomer José Funes says that life on Mars cannot be ruled out.

Besides, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created could exist in outer space. Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space.

And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.
Revealing interview with José Funes (video).

In 2009, Lachezar Filipov, deputy director of the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences said that even the seat of the Catholic church, the Vatican, had agreed that aliens existed.

In 2010, The Pope's astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, said Intelligent aliens may be living among the stars and are likely to have souls.

The late prelate of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples Corrado Balducci, a theologian of the Roman Curia and a good friend of the pope perhaps most clearly spoke out about the existence of extraterrestrials.

Balducci has said repeatedly that extraterrestrial contact is real and that there are aliens among us.

Referring to the episode of unsealed: Alien Files in the sign of the Vatican. The series is based on secret documents revealed by the FBI on April 8, 2011.

It is clear that the Vatican has evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Probably a wise decision if researchers involved in the study of possible life on Mars and in outer Space, contact the Vatican. It would be an interesting revelation.