German scientists are now convinced that life indeed exists in Mars, and they say that the evidence has been at hand a long time ago - more than 30 years to be exact.

They say that a new interpretation method applied on the findings that the Viking landers of 1976 collected reveal that the Martian surface could actually be bustling with microbes. In fact, a thousandth of it may be organic in origin.

The claim is founded on the evidence that hydrogen peroxide is present in the red planet's terrain. Some microbes in the Antarctic are known to possess the compound in their systems, which allows them to thrive in extreme environments as hostile as the aforementioned locales.

Hydrogen shields life because it has a freezing point of less than 56 degrees Celsius below zero. Organisms whose make-up possess that substance generally have high tolerance over low and high temperatures. It's even possible, they say, that these microbes came from Earth.

"We will have to find confirmatory evidence and see what kind of microbes these are and whether they are related to terrestrial microbes," says scientist Joop Houtkooper. "It is a possibility that life has been transported from Earth to Mars or vice versa a long time ago."

He then suggested to NASA and other space agencies to include other instruments for life detection on their next trip to Mars. This makes sense, as it would be practical to bring the right gear when you're spending millions on a spacecraft.