What sort of things might we hope to discover on Mars? This is another "synthesis" section. What might we find on Mars? Surprisingly, I can find hardly anything by way of detailed speculation about this - as usual do say if you know of a good paper to cite here. So I've based this section on various ideas for early life and alternative forms of biochemistry, and especially on any ideas that seem particularly relevant to Mars. I've also added a couple of speculative ideas of my own, clearly labeled (the idea of life based on replicating sheets instead of replicating strands is one of them).

Here are a few ideas.

If you think of anything I've left out here, do say!

All the possibilities here are of exceptional interest for biology. If there are habitats for life at all on Mars, whether inhabited or uninhabited, then biologists world wide will want to study them as they are now, and the results in the best case could be revolutionary for biology. Let's look a bit closer at some of these ideas.