Ammonia Could Indicate Life On Mars

Young Master writes "Just seen this story on good old Auntie Beeb, apparently traces of ammonia have been found in the Martian atmosphere. Ammonia doesn't last long on Mars, so it must be constantly replenished - it could be active volcanoes (none yet found), or it could indicate life..." Along with the detection of methane, Mars is starting to look a lot less dead than had been supposed.

Comments

Re:How do we know?

[kippy]

the lack of a magnetosphere and a thin atmosphere would allow more solar radiation to hit the surface. That breaks the hydrogen off of those molecules. Their presense means that they must have been made more recently than the length of time it takes to break them up.

Re:Life was inevitable

[cephyn]

Well, actually #3 isn't a safe assumption. The gravity wells of the two planets are very different, it is MUCH harder for an earth rock to land on mars. That said, the probability is not zero. It's just much less likely than finding Martian rocks here.

Re:It has a magnetosphere

[cephyn]

From your link:

The magnetic field of Mars is 1/800 as strong as Earth's and was first recorded in 1997 by the Mars Surveyor probe.

That's barely a magnetosphere. It is there, but it's not exactly substantial...

Re:Life was inevitable

[painandgreed]

Not only that, but there is the theory of panspermia. Basically, spores and microbes are constantly entering the upper atmosphere and from there entering space and have been at a slow but contant rate for millions if not billions of years. if protected in a body of dust or resistant to ultraviolet light such as many spores are it's possible for them to remain viable after a trip through space. As they head out in random directions from Earth, it stands to reson that eventually some of them would have been captured by Mar's gravity and entered their atmosphere and made it back to the surface where they could begin to prosper. Some people put forth that life could have originally been birthed on Mars and made it to Earth is such a manner.

Re:Underground lava seems more likely.

[Progman3K]

OK, but if there is volcanic outgassing, we'd be seeing other trace gasses along with ammonia, I expect. Are those present too?

I'm not absolutely sure about the chemical composition; but should there be increased dust that can be identified as coming from the interior, along with other elements like sulphur? I know sulphur may also be present in the case of life, but there must be some compounds which exclude one or the other possibilities.

If ammonia is alone, then it would confirm the life hypothesis, I expect.

On a side note, if there IS life over there, it may be the biggest news and the greatest gift to mankind ever: It might serve to finally get nations and peoples to realize that provincialization is stupid, and we're all in this together.

Good lord, I've never prayed God and asked him to grant me a wish, but in this case, I do.

Re:Christian fundamentalists will end NASA

[pjkundert]

Christians generally don't have a problem with life on mars, or anywhere else for that matter. Belief in the work of the Christ, and theories about exactly how and when things came into being are pretty independent of eachother.

Please don't confuse the term "Luddite Maniac" with "Christian".

Re:Life was inevitable

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

If I can kill all the bacteria in water by simply boiling it for a few minutes at ~100 celcius

That won't kill all the spores, which is why autoclaves operate at higher temperatures for much longer periods. And Oceanic vent-dwelling bacteria would find it posively chilly.

Re:Underground lava seems more likely.

[Rei]

There's still that pesky issue of "what *active* volcanoes are there on mars"? By all standards we've observed so far, it's a geologically dead planet. We've seen no active plate boundaries, no visible earthquakes or vulcanism, and - perhaps even more concerning - the planet has no sizable magnetic field.

I don't buy the life explanation either, though. Whenever there is chemistry going on in a planet that we don't yet understand, there's this natural tendancy to yell "it must be life!". There are many reactions which can produce ammonia gas. For example, there's the decomposition of ammonium salts by alkaline hydroxides or lime, the decomposition of magnesium hydroxide with water, etc. I'm not sure if any of these processes are applicable anywhere on mars, but "life" is not the only way to make ammonia.