Was there ever an ancient alien civilisation on Mars? Nasa FINALLY answers the age-old question

IT'S the question that has haunted everyone from David Bowie to Professor Stephen Hawking: is there life on Mars?

Now American scientists have spoken out to answer this conundrum - and the answer won't please alien hunters.

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A top Nasa boffin appeared at the US House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology's Space Subcommittee yesterday and had to deal with a very surprising query.

Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican who represents California's 48th congressional district, asked Ken Farley, a project scientist overseeing Nasa's Mars 2020 rover mission, if aliens ever lived on the Martian surface.

Farley was describing research which suggested water once flowed on Mars, which featured lakes, rivers and perhaps even a northern ocean until about 3.6 million years ago when Rohrabacher asked: "You have indicated that Mars was totally different thousands of years ago.

"Is it possible that there was a civilisation on Mars thousands of years ago?"

Farley replied: "So, the evidence is that Mars was different billions of years ago, not thousands of years ago, and there is no evidence I'm aware of that - "

Butting in, Rohrabacher then asked: "Would you rule that out?"

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"I would say that is extremely unlikely," Farley said.

So there you have it: Nasa has denied the existence of aliens on Mars.

However, this statement is unlikely to convince conspiracy theorists who claim to have spotted "the ruins of a walled city" on Mars as well as "alien cutlery" and an "extraterrestrial tree stump".

But the people who "found" these things will probably never be invited to a House of Representatives subcommittee to make their case, so we'll have to go with Nasa's argument for now.