To Find Life on Mars, Follow the...Salt?

When it comes to finding life on Mars, NASA has had a strategy: follow the water. It makes sense, life as we know it requires liquid water, so it would make sense that if liquid water could be found, that would be the logical place to look for any Martian life. We've even managed to find some liquid water in the form of the recurring slope lineae. However, some new research suggests that following the water may not be the best strategy. Their suggestion? Look for life in the driest, saltiest places.

This sounds very counter-intuitive, but it does make a certain amount of sense, considering how microbial life has adapted to the driest conditions here on Earth. In these hyperarid regions, life survives by going underground, living underneath salty crusts that absorb water directly from the air. There is a possibility that as Mars dried up and microbes huddled together in the last bits of liquid brine just below the surface, they evolved in a similar fashion to Earth microbes in a similar situation, subsisting on the small amount of water in the Martian atmosphere. The researchers also suggest that these environments probably dried up for the last time recently, and perhaps some still exist. It's not the most dignified way for life to get by, but to go for so long in such a hostile place would be impressive nonetheless.