My personal opinion

 

    I always wished that I would live long enough to witness the discovery of alien life on another planet. I guess a genie somewhere in this small world heard me and granted my wish, well sort of anyway.

    The discovery of  these microscopic life forms on a rock that came from mars found in  an Antarctic ice field in 1984 is amazing because we are now almost sure that life is or was possible on other planets than earth. Still, I wish that we would have found remains of an ancient civilization instead of tiny carbonized microbes. Even though, it is a step in the right direction. I once saw pictures of some sort of pyramids on the surface of the red planet in a television show and they also said that some of the holes in the pyramids on earth pointed to mars. So I like to think that the Martian pyramids are the vestige of a long gone civilization that flew to the earth because the Martian environment was too harsh and established themselves as the Egyptians. But that is pure fantasy. Then again...

    Apparently the discovery of microscopic bacteria has greatly inspired Hollywood with already ten extra-terrestrial movies in the works including five based on the planet mars with titles like "Mars lives!" and "The Creators". What I find a bit strange is that the NASA announced the discovery just before the government decided where to place its annual funds. Makes you wonder if the announcement was not "rushed" a little. If that is what it takes for the government invest more money into space and SETI (Search for extra-terrestrial intelligence) programs than I thank the NASA personally.

    Sky is not the limit anymore and the stars are our future. As long as we are on earth our future is not guarantied;  any second a meteorite could crash and destroy everything we created, thousands of years of effort and accumulating wisdom almost all for nothing. We should not only fear for a meteorite but also ourselves, if there is something were good at it is destroying our planet and if we destroy our home before, the earth before we can colonize another planet than it will be our own knowledge that will destroy us.

   

    Mars could mean a very bright future for our world too. The governments could unite together in an effort to send a colony on our sister planet and this in turn could lead to world peace. The finding of some long past life on mars is one of our most important discovery to date and we must continue to do more discoveries. The next big step is intelligent life and we must always continue searching.