Oceans on Mars

Mars with oceans

Writing fiction always stirs my imagination to come up with "what if" scenarios. To develop characters with depth, you have to challenge them. It's what makes a story interesting. 

What about alien geography and fictional locations? What if Mars had oceans? What would it look like? Would it be a sister planet to Earth or vastly different? 

Here is an artist's idea of what Mars would look like with global oceans. 

The bottom image shows water ice on the Martian surface.  It has been seen by scientists on Earth to change with the seasons. 

You don't have to imagine it. It's fact! They also know that oceans used to exist on the surface a long time ago. They were much more acidic than oceans on our planet. 

What kinds of life might have existed on Mars then? Can you imagine Martian tadpoles? Cockroaches? Sea horses? 

Sometimes science and science fiction are not that far apart. Fun to think about.