Spain’s red river may hold clues to life in Red Planet

If there is life on Mars, scientists believe it’s likely to be tiny organisms that can survive below the planet’s surface, without sunlight or oxygen, nourished by the minerals available even in that harsh environment.

In other words, says Ricardo Amils Pibernat, a researcher at Center for Astrobiology in Madrid, past or present life on the Red Planet could well resemble the unusual microbes that populate Spain’s Rio Tinto. The river, which flows through one of the world’s largest deposits of pyrite, or fool’s gold, has a Ph similar to that of automobile battery acid and contains virtually no oxygen in its lower depths.

The Rio Tinto is special because it provides an exceptionally good environment for bacteria that live by turning fool’s gold into sulphuric acid and dissolved iron, Amils explains. The chemical processes taking place in the river use up oxygen, leaving relatively little to support more typical organisms. Yet, hundreds of varieties of microbes have successfully adapted to life in the river.

The landscape along the Rio Tinto is rather otherworldly, with the iron in the soil giving it a reddish hue and with little plant life near the river. ‘‘If you remove the green, it looks like Mars,’’ Amils noted. (LATWP)