Mars find suggests our solar system is awash with life

There’s water on Mars, but is there life?

Within the space of a few weeks liquid water has been declared to exist on Mars (Is there life on Mars ? Running water may give a hint, 29 September), the Saturnian moon Enceladus and Pluto (Telegraph, 17 July). This must also surely spell out an abundance of Earth-like bacterial life for the simple reason that these planetary bodies must have had routes of physical connection over the past four billion years. The clear example is in Martian meteorites that blasted off the surface of Mars and fell on Earth as meteorites. In the cosmic context our planetary system is a small place and likely to be intimately interlinked. Water everywhere must mean life everywhere.
Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe
Director, Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, Visiting by-fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge