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A New Angle on Martian Methane
dusty writes "A recent hypothesis paper entititled 'Martian CH4: Sources, Flux, and Detection' delves into the production of methane on Mars. This hypothesis compares Mars with South Africa, and draws the conclusion that the radiolysis of martian ice and water while reacting with carbon dioxide can produce enough methane to account for recently observed concentrations.
Methane is important because it is hard to explain. It has a short half-life and must be replenished frequently. As recently as 2005 the public line from NASA/JPL was that the methane could be produced by volcanism. Mars' dormant Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system but auspiciously quiet. A recent study from NOAA throws into question the whole idea stating, 'If Mauna Loa is a valid terrestrial analog, our findings suggest that volcanic activity is not a significant source of methane to the Martian atmosphere.'"
And now we're here discussing Martian methane. Hooray for fart jokes!
as anyone with 3 male roommates can testify to.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
It has a short half-life and must be replenished frequently.
Methane has a short half-life? I thought only radioactive elements had "half-lifes". Either I am just dumb about this (entirely possible) or someone chose their words poorly.
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All that looong summary and no mention of the most interesting posibility: that the methane is life-generated by bacteria and the like living under the Martian soil.
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It just goes to show that Martians like beans... A lot.
Nope. Its "the most powerful". While they might cover the same surface area, Olympus Mons stands much higher.
Of course the real business with a volcano happens under ground and we don't know much about this part of either volcano.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"'If Mauna Loa is a valid terrestrial analog, our findings suggest that volcanic activity is not a significant source of methane to the Martian atmosphere.'"
Man, I wish more of our scientific quotes sounded like this one. It lays it out straight and simple. Here is our source of info: analogy with Mauna Loa. Here is our assumption: we can project info from it onto Olympus Mons. Here is our conclusion: there is something else other than volcanic activity producing methane on Mars. I like how all that info was neatly packaged into a simple sentence. I also like how he admits the assumption... if. The thing that comes to mind are all the dinosaur shows explaining their day to day lives, zodiac signs and favorite take-out places.
"This hypothesis compares Mars with South Africa". Being from South Africa I take offense at this. How can you compare a dry harsh violent place such as Mars to our country ? Oh , wait...nevermind.
Uhm. Since always? Science is the whole idea of making a (thought out or not) statement, and then setting about disproving it. If you fail to disprove it, you end up with the 'last option is that it's true' idea.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I agree totally and welcome our new bacterial overlords.
Science, particularly in the US, seems to be slipping back into its old habits. Dogma reigns supreme and dissident voices are quashed without cause or concern simply for going against the norm.
A friend of mine used to argue that science was no different from religion, and scientists a new breed of priest. I hated his argument, but lately I have had to question how valid that may be.
The question to ask then is, why would life on Mars recieve such scathing denials from the scientific community? Who benefits from from perpetuating the belief that there can be no life on Mars?
Surely if one applies occams razor to the question, we must believe strongly in the possibility that Mars does indeed have the capability of supporting some forms of primitive life. This is especially easy to believe when one considers some of the habitats where life has been found here on earth. Buried thousands of meters in rock, volcanic vents 6Km below the suface of the ocean and boiling lakes of acid...
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Auspiciously quiet?
Self awareness - try it!
would be seriously dumb as CH4 is a much more potent greenhouse gas than C02, and stockpiling it would harder than just stockpiling the CO2 in the first place.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Martian generals seeking to know the outcome of the next day's battle have to rely on chicken entrails rather than smoke plumes. Makes perfectly good sense to me.
Pining for the fjords
> "Who benefits from from perpetuating the belief that there can be no life on Mars?"
The most logical answer is just "common sense." It's been universally accepted that Mars is a barren planet for hundreds of years (mice in telescopes and canals aside). That builds a lot of inertia to overcome by anyone that wants to come along and change that belief.
The other possibility is a roadblock that The Mars Society and The Mars Underground ran into a couple of years back. Their goal is to get NASA to Mars and eventually begin terraforming and colonization but a lot of there supporters turned on them when they realized they might destroy any life native to Mars if we completely re-engineered the martian environment.
This inevitably lead to a wikipedia entry dedicated to it.
True, Olympus Mons is absolutely huge. The summit is at 27 kilometres above the mean surface level on Mars and it covers a surface area the size of Arizona. It would be fantastic to be able to stand on that summit and enjoy the view.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
It's called: Remarkable claims require remarkable evidence.
Science isn't about believing anything is possible until proved otherwise. I think many scientists would agree that it's possible there is or was life on Mars. But life evolving independently anywhere other than Earth would be a major breakthrough for science, so they want to be very careful about claiming it until it is really, unquestionably proved. IMO this is just good science.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Didn't Thomas Gold postulate that we'd find lots of methane on Mars? He had many intriguing theories on "deep life" - and recent evidence of "replenishment" of petroleum reserves, IIRC, while puzzling to geologists following the standard theories, would not have been a mystery to him.
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The better you feel,
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With every meal!
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Good point, I cant disagree with that.
I suppose a lot of it also comes down to what we want science to tell us.
1. Men have a higher IQ than women on average... Yaaaay.
2. Methane on Mars is NOT from farts... Boooo.
Of course, this is just my opinion.
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You can't power a rocket to take you back home with solar panels. You might be able to do so with stuff like methane. I think that this is the basic idea. I doubt that they need methane to power equipement destined to stay on the planet.
The problem is that "facts" are slippery creatures. People lie. Instruments are faulty. Methods are applied incorrectly. Relationships between variables are misunderstood. There are all sorts of reasons why what we think of as factual may be incorrect. To combat this science requires that experiments be repeatable under controlled conditions. Given enough trials, we tend to believe that the facts, at least, are correct. This establishes "dogma", if you like, but I would say it establishes a baseline of pretty-well-agreed-upon facts upon which theory may be based.
Given this metaphysic, when a new "fact" comes along that doesn't match the framework, it's going to tend to be treated skeptically until bolstered with other supporting evidence, at which point scientists have no choice but to incorporate it. But more often than not the new "fact" turns out to be wrong and is rejected. A new "fact" is more extraordinary the more urgently it requires a change in existing theory.
Karl Popper is a good reference to read for more about this kind of thing.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Raw UV radiation causes methane to convert to more stable water and carbon dioxide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Methane
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Everybody knows that Martian Methane is produced by Martian cows.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is a misuse of Occam's Razor. The principle basically says that the solution that requires the fewest number of variables is most likely to be correct. So in this case, the existance of life on mars is a big "extra", if the presence of methane can be explained without it.
Time to take the War on Drugs to Mars. Can't have those evil martians poisoning our children! Oh, it's methANE, you say? Nevermind.
(Need to revive old thread :-)
So, if you ask me, I think the large, renewable supply of methane on mars is really an exciting thing that opens many possibilities for survival and inhabitance of the red planet.
Anything can, could, and will happen.
If Mauna Loa is a valid terrestrial analog, then Mars will soon be providing us with delicious macadamia nuts.
Just a heads up, TFA is a bloaty PDF.
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You're not talking about a power source, just an expensive and dangerous power transmission medium.
Dangerous? I think it's under control. We use this all the time. What about those natural gas pipes everywhere?
What do you mean? They have sent lots of missions to Mars, spent billions of dollars doing that, and still try again to find any sign of life.
If scientists were so interested in denying the existence of life in Mars they wouldn't have had any need to send other spacecraft after the Viking missions in 1976. But they still keep trying, even if the data seems to indicate that Mars is lifeless and has always been so.
we must believe strongly in the possibility that Mars does indeed have the capability of supporting some forms of primitive life.
The problem is that the *capability* to support life is not the same as *existence* of life. I have no doubt that bacteria could survive and reproduce in some places on Mars. On Earth, we have even found life (Pseoudomoma Radiourans bacteria) inside nuclear reactors.
However, even if evolution allows existing beings to adapt to hostile environments, it doesn't mean life will arise in those places. Life adapts to hostile environments, but it's logical to assume that the situation where life first came into existence on Earth was far more benign than anything that exists on Mars.
Send it to New Scientist, they'll print it.
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