Finding life on Mars now has better odds than the Yankees have of winning the 2015 World Series

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published 28 September 2015

The possibility that there are actual Martians on Mars got a whole lot more likely on Monday, when NASA announced it found signs of liquid water on the red planet. In light of that news, Irish bookmaker Paddy Power knocked the odds of finding life on Mars from 100-1 to 22-1. Now finding life on Mars has better odds than some have had for the Yankees winning the 2015 World Series (and about the same odds the Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Ravens have of getting Super Bowl rings next year).

There's probably not a whole lot of actual science going on behind bookies' numbers, aside from the fact that life as we understand it depends fundamentally on the presence of water. What's even more exciting, then, is that Alfred McEwen, the principal investigator for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), is feeling pretty good about the chances of life, too. "The possibility of life in the interior of Mars has always been very high," McEwen said. "It's very likely I think that there is life somewhere in the crust of Mars."

"On Earth, wherever we find water, we find life," Dr. Joe Michalski of the Natural History Museum confirmed. Of course, any life on the red planet will probably be microscopic: Microbes or bacteria, for example, rather than little green men. Still, that's life — and for it to exist independent of Earth would be incredibly significant.