NASA estimates 1 billion ‘Earths’ in our galaxy alone

"Your research is crap, do not bother to apply again"

It is probable that much of Mars's water is now tied up in permafrost. The atmospheric pressure is so low that frozen water sublimates, and it is present only at the poles, I believe, in small amounts. That might be what the drilling is about.

On Mars, the term soil implies no biogenic component, as it does on Earth. It includes surficial deposits such as windblown dust and sand that may locally form small drifts or dunes, in addition to fragmented bedrock.

On Earth, a planet teeming with microbial life, it’s difficult to identify hydrocarbons in rocks that are billions of years old. The discovery of organics depends on three processes: (1) enrichment in the primary environ- ment, usually by reduction of background sediment, which allows any organics to preferentially accumulate; (2) minimization of the effects of oxidative diagenesis during the conversion of sediment to rock (lithification); and (3) minimization of the thermal decomposition of organic molecules during burial. On a planet without plate tectonics and with a lithosphere that is thicker than Earth’s, thus reducing geothermal gradients, Mars is a better planet for reducing the risk of thermal degradation during burial. However, with its much thinner atmosphere, Mars poses a far greater risk of degradation by radiolysis once rocks are exposed at the surface (Farley et al. 2014; Mahaffy et al. 2015). Nevertheless, the point is that just as explorers of carbon in ancient rocks on Earth must optimize their chances of success, so must our robots on Mars.

Like Earth, this planet has undergone differentiation, resulting in a dense, metallic core region overlaid by less dense materials. Current models of the planet’s interior imply a core region about 1,794 km (1,115 mi) ± 65 km (40 mi) in radius, consisting primarily of iron and nickel with about 16–17% sulfur. This iron sulfide core is partially fluid, and has twice the concentration of the lighter elements that exist at Earth’s core. The core is surrounded by a silicate mantle that formed many of the tectonic and volcanic features on the planet, but now appears to be dormant. Besides silicon and oxygen, the most abundant elements in the Martian crust are iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium, and potassium. The average thickness of the planet’s crust is about 50 km (31 mi), with a maximum thickness of 125 km (78 mi). Earth’s crust, averaging 40 km (25 mi), is only one third as thick as Mars’s crust, relative to the sizes of the two planets. The InSight lander planned for 2016 will use a seismometer to better constrain the models of the interior.

the pronouncement that evolution solves all the problems isn't very interesting to me... what is interesting is figuring out how life evolved, how these steps happened.

theoretical biologists

Einstein's cosmological constant, put into the General Relativity to keep the universe static, was abandoned once Hubble observed that all the galaxies were receding, implying an expanding universe.