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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."

25 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. SBD by Mud_Monster · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mars is farting, hehe.

    1. Re:SBD by smooth+wombat · · Score: 3, Funny

      "We cannot risk contamination of Earth cows' genetics from six-legged Martian cows."

      Oh come on! Everyone knows there are no cows are Mars. Mars has buggalo!

      --
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  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. UK has the comic character on Mars! by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  4. Greenhouse gas! That stuff is worse than CO2 ... by NotBornYesterday · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  5. Martian planetary defence system by chebucto · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Martian planetary defence system by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This joke and others like it would be a lot funnier if not for the fact that methane is odorless. It's not the methane you smell in farts, it's all the other stuff the gas picks up on its passage through, well, a tube full of shit.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    2. Re:Martian planetary defence system by domatic · · Score: 4, Informative

      In particular, mercaptans, hydrogen sulfide, and other sulfur compounds are responsible for most the disagreeable oder of flatus.

  6. Lovelock - Gaia hypothesis strong evidence against by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  7. Methane on Mars, 2004 by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

    This was reported by Mars Express in 2004.

    1. Re:Methane on Mars, 2004 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, but that's the ESA and the BBC. This time it's an AMERICAN agency reporting on it, so it's newsworthy goddammit!

    2. Re:Methane on Mars, 2004 by sighted · · Score: 5, Informative

      IANAS, but it appears that since these findings were obtained by a completely different process, they provide important confirmation of the Mars Express data--and extend that knowledge in an important way by adding location-specific information. From TFA: "According to the team, the plumes were seen over areas that show evidence of ancient ground ice or flowing water. For example, plumes appeared over northern hemisphere regions such as east of Arabia Terra, the Nili Fossae region, and the south-east quadrant of Syrtis Major, an ancient volcano 1,200 kilometers (about 745 miles) across."

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  8. Re:Greenhouse gas! That stuff is worse than CO2 .. by elrous0 · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
  9. Re:Greenhouse gas! That stuff is worse than CO2 .. by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  10. Both are good by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  11. Re:It's comeing form the under grround citys there by Jeppe+Salvesen · · Score: 4, Funny

    Bravo, you misspelt "cities" in two different ways! A good day for humankind indeed.

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    Stop the brainwash

  12. Re:fart jokes anyone? by PsyciatricHelp · · Score: 4, Funny

    I bet Uranus has tons of Methane emmisions.

  13. Let's take that seriously for a moment by Kupfernigk · · Score: 5, Insightful
    We've only explored one planet seriously, and looked at a tiny bit of a moon with extreme temperature variation. Almost everywhere we look on the planet - water, air, surface, crevices in rocks - we find lots of living things and the remains of even more. We find things like thiobacter concretivorans chewing up nuclear reactors. We find complex features that arise through different biological routes - image forming eyes evolve separately at least twice. We find a variety of body plans. We find two different data storage systems, DNA and RNA. The evidence so far is that life appears all over the place and can inhabit moderately sever environments so long as it has a source of energy, an electrolyte, and some stuff around the place suitable for building molecules based on carbon backbones.

    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.

    --
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    1. Re:Let's take that seriously for a moment by PapayaSF · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I generally agree, but the Gaia hypothesis says a trace amount of methane probably isn't evidence of life. Lovelock's argument regarding Mars was that if there was any life there, it would be easy to tell. The fact that extremophile life exists in niches on Earth doesn't really show that a small amount of extremophile life exists on Mars: over the eons it would have evolved, spread, and altered the Martian environment in ways easy to see. The theory doesn't rule out the possibility that there was once life on Mars that died out, though.

      --
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    2. Re:Let's take that seriously for a moment by Shimmer · · Score: 3, Informative

      You are confusing two different concepts. This should be an argument about the prevalence of abiogenesis (i.e. the creation of life from non-life), not the ability of life to adapt to harsh environments.

      On the other hand, it could turn out that there is life on Mars that was carried there from Earth (e.g. via a chunk of rock that was ejected from Earth and landed on Mars). In that case, we're back to marveling at the resilience of our single tree of life.

      --
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  14. Oblig. Futurama ref. by slashdotmsiriv · · Score: 4, Funny

    "The gas was detected with observations made over several Martian years with NASA smeloscopes at Mauna Kea, Hawaii."

  15. Re:Send in the drill by lwsimon · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is the question "Is there oil on Mars?"

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  16. Mars Rovers? by TheSync · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are any of the Mars Rovers near the methane plume sites?

  17. Re:Methane is everywhere in the solar system by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did you miss the bit about methane having a very limited persistence in the Martian atmosphere, because of the UV?

  18. Methane by mqduck · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wait, methane = life? So that's why aliens always begin with our anuses when studying us.

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