More pictures from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) show more signs of abundant and flowing water on Mars... once upon a time. These new pictures, such as the one used by National Geographic in reporting this, show cracks on the Martian surface that look like aquifers.

Yeah, this adds to the body of evidence that Mars had water once, but what's new about this? Scientists are theorizing that the same cracks might exist underneath the surface of Mars. With this in mind we have the potential explanation for the signs of water erosion they saw back last year with the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS).

Now that water on Mars is somewhat established by the evidence, some NASA scientists are suggesting that the search for life on Mars should shift from the current strategy of looking in places where there are signs of water, to something more focused. One suggestion is to focus more intently on the geology of Mars, studying rocks to find signs of microbial activity there. They believe that these microbes could live by harnessing chemical energy from the rocks, as some Earth-bound bacteria do.

Photosynthesis is nature's way of converting light energy to chemical energy. Happening mostly with plants, the leaves are the primary site of the process of photosynthesis. Professor Max Crossley's molecular electronics group at the University of Sydney has tapped into this process, in the hopes that by mimicking aspects of natural photosynthesis, synthetic molecules in plants may one day form the basis of highly efficient solar cells.

Creating a synthetic form of chlorophyll that performs the first part of the process (that would be the conversion of light energy to electrical energy), Crossley and the team shaped it like a soccer ball, with a dendrimer scaffold, a highly-branched nanosized polymer made of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Attached to the dendrimer are synthetic versions of the light-harvesting pigment porphyrin. These synthetic molecules, arranged in a dense array, then act in concert to efficiently collect photons of light. Buckyballs, or spherical carbon molecules, then sit between the porphyrin and soak up electrons from the photons of collected light.

"There has to be a lot of them because if there was only one it would be a very inefficient process," says Crossley.

The team has recently presented its research at the International Conference on Porphyrins and Phtalocyanines in Rome. Meanwhile, Dr. Deanna D'Alessandro, team member and postdoctoral researcher, is one of 16 scientists who are set to present their research to the public for the first time under the Fresh Science initiative.