A SCHOOLBOY scientist has stunned Europe's top boffins by proving the existence of life on Mars.

Edwin Kite, 17, amazed academics with his ground-breaking work into the mysteries of whether alien life ever existed in the solar system.

He has discovered the Red Planet could have sustained algae-like life between three and four thousand million years ago.

The teenage prodigy represented the UK in the Life in the Universe competition held at CERN, the European Particle Physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland.

He beat competition from 60 teams from 22 European states and won a trip to Nasa's astrobiology lab in Madrid - the world's premier institute for these studies.

In his presentation Could Mars Have Supported Advanced Life?, Edwin presented models of the Martian atmosphere over thousands of millions of years and used his own computer programme to design a rocket ship which could make the trip to the Earth's closest neighbour.

He said: "I concentrated my studies on the Martian middle ages, and looked at algae rather than animals.

He added: "What I found is that Mars could have supported some form of life. But to know for sure we would have to go there."

As a result of his work, Edwin, who is sitting five A-levels at St Cuthbert's School, in Benwell, Newcastle, has been offered the chance to work at the European Space Agency Research and Development Centre, in the Netherlands, next summer.