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The question of whether life ever existed on Mars has inspired scientists – and songwriters – for decades. The Red Planet is currently an arid, icy desert where no sign of life remains, but was it always this way?

It is widely recognised that living entities have three basic requirements: standing water, an energy source and the five chemical elements, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus and nitrogen. Then a very long time for the chemical soup to stew. The rover Curiosity has found evidence of all three in certain areas of Mars, namely the Gale Crater, but were these available for long enough for life to develop?
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Back in 1965, maverick scientist James Lovelock, warned an oil company that the year 2000 would not be dominated by fusion-powered cars or advanced technology, but by the changing climate.

"It will be worsening then to such an extent that it will seriously affect their business," he said. He may have slightly under-played the effect of advanced technology on our society, but he was certainly not wrong about the environment.
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A combination of industrial pollution and climate-change-driven oxygen loss is turning the great Canadian lakes into jelly, according to new research by Cambridge University scientists published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

A "battle of the plankton" between two competing species, Holopedium and the planktonic Daphnia, has been taking place in the delicate ecosystem of the lakes; however, calcium depletion in the lakes is making survival difficult for Daphnia, which require the mineral to form a vital component of their exoskeleton defending them from predators, and consequently populations of Holopedium have doubled since the 1980s. Without the presence of Daphnia, algae is multiplying and providing an unlimited food source for its competitor.read more