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New Clue for Life on Mars?
thhamm writes "Recent analyses of ESA's Mars Express data reveal that concentrations of water vapour and methane in the atmosphere of Mars significantly overlap. This result, from data obtained by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS), gives a boost to understanding of geological and atmospheric processes on Mars, and provides important new hints to evaluate the hypothesis of present life on the Red Planet."
all but the 5th planet are yours, oh, you might want to avoid that nasty 4th planet, too..
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's really awesome, and really amazing, that as we study Mars more, the evidence suggests more and more that life is possible. In other words, the body of evidence isn't ruling life out even as we gather more evidence. It's STILL premature to assume this is life-generated, but its another awesome piece of support for the increased possibility of life.
Moo.
Why the assumption that life can't evolve without water??
They used the phrases "tens of centimeters" and "tens of degrees celsius". I really hate these terms, especially in what should be a scientific article. This could mean anywhere from 20-100 (or more) which is a pretty broad range. Would it be so difficult to say 20-50 (or whatever the measurements are) which would give a much more accurate picture?
Where the hell do the Martians come from?
Put life on mars.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Vampires don't breathe, and they're teeming beneath the dried-blood surface of Mars. Those telltale methane/water signals must be more residue from the victims from which the iron-rich surface powder was derived, shielding the biters from the rays of the Sun.
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make install -not war
It just seems that there are some spots that might be a little warmer than others, or so goes the hypothesis as I understand it, from geothermal sources. It seems like a little bit of a stretch to link it directly with life on Mars. Perhaps this gives some ideas where to look for life on Mars, but the article itself doesn't seem to make much in the way for claims about Martian life.
Am I reading this wrong?
If I am not, does every discovery about Mars need to really be linked to life for it to be fascinating? Or does the press feel that's the need these days?
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
The martians have your rover in a containment unit that makes you humans think that you're exploring their world!
the Wong's have all those herds. Of course they have methane and ammonia. Duh.
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Found on Uranus. Especially after drinking a few too many Beers and eating some mexican food.
Noted scientist Marvin, native to Mars, had disclosed his observations concerning the 3rd planet from the Sun. From his latest discourse "... ohhh, you are making me very angry.." Critics agree, he is green with envy and possibly has access to a BFG. One warns "... be on the lookout for a 'flying saucer' type craft in the Earth's moon's orbit..." and suggests getting some local wildlife, perhaps a rabbit, to meet the threat. Stay tuned for details.
If NASA were to say collect some of the water vapor, bottle it, and get it back here, then they would have no need for goverment funding...
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I'd just as soon leave it alone. We don't encounter new planets every day, and I'd really hate to have future generations say, "If only they'd left it alone rather than screwed it up." History is full of well-meaning scientists who didn't understand what they were doing and therefore lost valuable information. How many artifacts have been cut open or broken before we had X-rays and CAT scans?
Humanity will be around for a long, long time. There will be plenty of opportunities to seed Mars with whatever we want, but only one chance to see the untouched Mars and perform experiments we haven't yet conceived.
The only problem with terraforming mars is the lack of magnetic field and its weak gravity. The weak gravity allows the atmosphere to escape http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Mars/atmosphere.htm l and the lack of magnetic field allows the solar wind to blow the rest of the atmosphere away. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_1 .htm So, we could make it fit for human habitation, but we would have to continually replenish the atmosphere making it uneconomical.
Yeah. If we see the sig of *both* methane and
oxygen then its pretty much a nobrainer there's
life.
Methane on it's own, given mars' current atmosphere
composition is just a teaser. Annnoying, real sexy, but geologic processes could be responsible.
I hope we see lots more surprises. Heck. we are just
starting to play with this place. Its one big planet even though it looks small and I for one pray that no
nasty stupid monkey hobnail boots it before we get
to do serious science...
No, a spectrometer measures reflected (or scattered, trasmitted, emitted) electromagnetic radiation (EM). Methane and water have different spectral signatures. They reflect EM -- or light -- differently. Probably, they're measuring the absorption patterns in the atmosphere.
...and hence we will never be able to do anything useful with the place.
To look at a rock in space and say, " I doubt there is life there" is to ignore the fact that we have yet to find a place where life can't exist (maybe the sun...). In essence, if there is energy, then there exists the potential for something to exploit that energy. And more often the not, something does.
The question should be "What is living on this rock, and why can't I find it?"
>Mars would be reasonable if it had a working greenhouse effect. Temperatures on Venus would be reasonable (although a _little_ on the warm side) if it didn't.
OT: actually this is not strictly true; a greenhouse effect is the least of Venus's problems. Venus is an Earth-sized world which never underwent a large collision in it's formation and never aquired a lunar body. Earth, conversely, had a small planetoid smack into it some four billion years ago, blasting away most of the atmosphere and putting enough debris in orbit to form a very large moon. The impact combined with the subesquent lunar gravity skimming away the upper atmosphere ensued that the Earth wound up with a _very_ thin atmosphere for a body it's size.
In the case of Mars, the planet is much smaller (around 40% the size of Earth or Venus IIRC). Furthermore Mars has not one but two samll moons in orbit (unlike ours, they're really just captured asteroids but that's beside the point). And Mars has no protective magnetic field, and is consequently exposed to charged solar radiation, further thinning the atmosphere. Thus the pressure on the surface is way lower than terrestrial norms, whereas on Venus the pressure is obscenely high by our standards. The temerature differences are a matter of insulation largely (and solar proximity) but a greenhouse effect is almost moot. You might as well say that lunar nights would be warmer if the moon had a greenhouse effect; it's true but misleading given that the major issue is the simple presence or absence of a gas envelope. And no, the greenhouse effect does not refer to just insulation; it refers to the presence of gases that are trasparent to visible light but reflective to InfraRed (IIRC).
The theory I've heard is that Mars had a higher pressure and surface water at one point before its magnetic field quit. At this stage it would have still been fairly cold, but otherwise suitable for limited life. Life could have evolved then and subsequently died off; the interesting question is whether any life could have survived in niche environments.
Any astrophysicists or biologists care to elaborate/correct?
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