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Methane On Mars May Indicate Living Planet
Riding with Robots writes "NASA is announcing today that the definitive detection of methane in the Martian atmosphere means the planet is still alive, at least geologically, and perhaps even biologically. 'Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,' said one agency scientist. The gas was detected with observations made over over several Martian years with NASA telescopes at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Both biological and geological processes could explain the methane."
over 40 years ago Lovelock pointed out that you can tell there is life on earth because the atmosphere is HUGELY out of chemical equilibrium.
And it is maintained that way due to life on earth.
He also argued that by the same reasoning, there ain't life on Mars.
I suspect this bit of disequilibrium is not enough
to indicate life.
Has any probe carried a mass spectrometer? If not that should be a high priority to find out which isotopes are being produced as well, would help answer the organic vs. volcanic question.
I think I heard somewhere that methane gas contributes to Global Warming. If Mars is going through Global Warming shouldn't it be renamed to Solar, or even Universal, Warming?
No. Global refers to the local planet in context. As for universal warming, fat chance of that. Given the universe's expansion and the laws of thermodynamics, the universe will eventually cool to somewhere around 0K (but probably not exactly at 0K, due to quantum vaccuum energy) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
I think we need a qualifier for "relatively quickly" and "that long" when talking about geologic timescales. When dealing with this sort of thing "relatively quickly" could mean anything from a few months to several million years.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
If Mars is geologically active, then it may make geo-thermal power a very real possibility. At the same time, it gives heat for a station as well as greenhouse. If it is biological in nature, all the more interesting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Are any of the Mars Rovers near the methane plume sites?
One of the biggest myths of modern times is the belief that coal and oil are the fossil remains of prehistoric plants and animals. These deposits were created from abiotic hydrocarbon gases deep within the earth. This discovery of methane on Mars may lead to the further discovery of hopanoids or hydrocarbon fuels on Mars and possibly a biomass of organisms similar to ones that are found deep within the earth. Thomas Gold predicted all of this years ago(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold). His seminal paper "The Deep,Hot Biosphere", which explains this is available here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=49434 -Johanus
Reading this article http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090115-mars-methane-news.html gives the impression that they're talking months. From the article.
The methane plumes started to show up in the northern hemisphere spring of Mars, gradually building up and peaking in late summer. At one point during the study, the primary plume contained about 19,000 metric tons (21,000 tons) of methane, comparable to the amount produced at the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Pit Point in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Short-lived
Outside of the plumes, methane concentrations were very low, showing that the gas didn't get very far or last very long in the atmosphere. In fact, its lifetime was even shorter than expected or could be explained by the usual method of methane destruction, photolysis (reaction with sunlight).
So it sounds seasonal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism