Scientists discovered a subsurface aquifer on Earth that could help them understand how alien life could be supported elsewhere in the universe.

According to Discovery News, authors of a study published in the journal Nature Communications detailed a briny liquid found beneath the surface of an Antarctic valley. Studying the area from above, the researchers determined the aquifers were about 1,000 below the surface.

"It may change the way people think about the coastal margins of Antarctica," Jill Mikucki, an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, said in a press release. "We know there is significant saturated sediment below the surface that is likely seeping into the ocean and affecting the productivity of things that feed ocean food webs. It lends to the understanding of the flow of nutrients and how that might affect ecosystem health."

The researchers also determined the bodies of water to host some kind of life forms, possibly relating them to subsurface lakes spotted on other moons and planets in the Solar System.

"It suggests that this ecosystem is extensive and connected. There could be a very, very large subsurface habitable environment throughout the Antarctic regions," study co-author Ross Virginia, an ecosystem ecologist at Dartmouth College, told Discovery News. "One of the big questions now is this finding regionally specific, or are there many locations in Antarctica where we have conditions that have created these subsurface environments for life."

NASA's Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars has returned a trove of evidence that would suggest the Red Planet could host microbial life. Scientists now have enough to say the planet was once covered mostly in water, like the Earth.

"The subsurface aquifers that we've been looking at in the (Antarctic) are potential analogs to understanding Mars systems," Mikucki told Discovery News. "We still have a lot to learn about these dry valley aquifer systems, but they appear to be related to climate changes."