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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."
Mars is farting, hehe.
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Proof right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Fartpants
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
They'll destroy their environment! If they don't slap some limits on those gas emissions, or come up with a workable credit-trading plan, they'll end up with a dry, dusty, desert planet in no time!
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
So the martians weren't knocking out our probes because they thought we were attacking - they were just embarrassed about the smell. And to be honest, this revelation does lower my opinion of martians. I think a few eons of evolution might help to teach them some manners.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
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.
:) Obviously we caused Marsian warming. Or at least us conservatives did it. Do you know how much fossil fuels it takes to get from here to there.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
It's coming form the under ground city's there.
Meth on Mars may indicate Martians who need to go to rehab.
OK, but I don't really care about Methane on Mars. I'm REALLY worried about Methane from Uranus.
There... is that the joke you were expecting?
It's not worse than CO2, because it decays relatively quickly in the atmosphere. That's why this find is significant, it means the methane hasn't been in the atmosphere that long, which means there's still an active process on Mars that's putting it there.
http://www.mhall119.com
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.
This was reported by Mars Express in 2004.
there's still an active process on Mars that's putting it there
Oh, that's just James. He had beans for lunch again.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
I bet Uranus has tons of Methane emmisions.
I suspect that we don't know enough about how planets with atmospheres but no life behave to be able to determine if there were a chemical equilibrium or not. I also suspect that the people at NASA and most credible scientists believe that the chance of other life in our solar system is very small, but should be investigated anyway.
Putting aside some books written by people who thought the Earth was flat, the evidence to date is that where life is possible, there you find it. If you even half accept Popper's falsificationism, it is up to the people who believe that life doesn't appear wherever it is possible to prove that there is no life on Mars. People who believe that life on Mars is probable are actually just accepting that the cumulative evidence of experience is likely to be correct.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"The gas was detected with observations made over several Martian years with NASA smeloscopes at Mauna Kea, Hawaii."
Or perhaps it is just that the people at NASA have figured out that holding up the _possibility_ of other life in our solar system is their surest bet for justifying their continued employment? It is obviously a geologic process, but planetary science is boring... "little green men", on the other hand, is a subject that really gets the ignorant taxpayers excited.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Is the question "Is there oil on Mars?"
Learn about Photography Basics.
Are any of the Mars Rovers near the methane plume sites?
Science doesn't investigate only those things which seem "likely." If we operated that way we'd be nowhere by now.
Coming from a background of ignorance, how "likely" would you think it was that a lump of some rare metal could be made to explode with the force of thousands of tons of TNT?
Our sun and solar system is a second generation system, made from the rubble of a previous star that went nova billions of years ago.
Jupiter, and Uranus have red spots that indicate Methane in their lower atmosphere. Some moons of Saturn have lakes and rivers of methane (Titan and Europa). That indicates that methane is older than the solar system and was created in the previous solar system that this one is made from.
Consequently, the presence of Methane doesn't say anything about the presence of life.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Hey, if it's "obviously" a geologic process, would you mind exactly WHAT process it is? Keep in mind that Mars has no current volcanic activity. And if there is/was no life, it's not a fossil fuel.
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
Wait, methane = life? So that's why aliens always begin with our anuses when studying us.
Property is theft.
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
Stale, stale, stale. There is nothing new here. Except that the Princeps-Designate is opposed to human space exploration and NASA might be trying to drum up public interest.