ACTON, Australia, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- Australian scientists say modeling studies suggest as much as 3 percent of Mars is habitable by terrestrial life, although most of that area is underground.
A team of researchers at the Australian National University compared models of temperature and pressure conditions on Earth with those on Mars to estimate how much of the Red Planet might be habitable for Earth-like organisms, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported Monday.
"What we tried to do, simply, was take almost all of the information we could and put it together and say 'is the big picture consistent with there being life on Mars?'" astrobiologist Charley Lineweaver said. "And the simple answer is yes... There are large regions of Mars that are compatible with terrestrial life."
While just one percent of Earth's volume from the core to the upper limits of the atmosphere is occupied by life, Linewaver said, the modeling suggested 3 percent of Mars -- mostly underground -- was "habitable by Earth-like standards by Earth-like microbes."
Underground, where pressure is higher, water could exist in liquid form and it would also be warm enough, at certain depths, for bacteria and other micro-organisms to thrive due to heat from the planet's core, he said.
Lineweaver called his study "the best estimate yet published of how habitable Mars is to terrestrial microbes."
