TEXTO:
New photos of a huge crater on Mars suggest water
may lurk in crevices under the planet’s surface, hinting
that life might have once lived there, and raising the
possibility that it may live there still, researchers say.
[5] Future research looking into the chances of life on Mars
could shed light on the origins of life on Earth, scientists
added. […]
Space agencies have deployed many missions to
Mars over the decades to explore how habitable its
[10] surface may have been or is today. However, the Martian
surface has been extremely cold, arid and chemically
hostile to life as we know it for most of the history of
Mars. Instead of scanning the surface of Mars for life,
scientists have suggested the most viable habitat for
[15] ancient simple life may have been in Martian water hidden
underground.
On Earth, microbes up to 3 miles or more
underground make up perhaps half of all of the planet’s
living matter. Most of these organisms represent some
[20] of the most primitive kinds of microbes known, hinting
that life may actually have started underground, or at
least survived there during a series of devastating cosmic
impacts known as the Late Heavy Bombardment that
Earth and the rest of the inner solar system endured
[25] about 4.1 billion to 3.8 billion years ago.
Since Mars has less gravity — a surface gravity of
a little more than one-third Earth’s — its crust is less
dense and more porous than that of our planet,
which means that more water can leak underground,
[30] researchers said. Wherever there is liquid water on Earth,
there is virtually always life, and microbes underground
on Mars could be sustained by energy sources
and chemical reactions similar to those that support
deep-dwelling organisms on Earth.
[35] “The deep crust has always been the most habitable
place on Mars, and would be a wise place to search for
evidence for organic processes in the future,” Michalski
[of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.] told
SPACE.com.
A wet Mars underground. Disponível em: <http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/01/21/giant-mars-crater-shows-evidence-lake-life/ #ixzz2IcWy5oCl>. Acesso em: 12 out. 2013.
Considering language use in the text, it’s correct to say:
