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."

Comments

SBD

[Mud_Monster]

Mars is farting, hehe.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Greenhouse gas! That stuff is worse than CO2 ...

[NotBornYesterday]

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!

Martian planetary defence system

[chebucto]

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.

Re:Martian planetary defence system

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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.

Re:Martian planetary defence system

[domatic]

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

Methane on Mars, 2004

[mbone]

This was reported by Mars Express in 2004.

Re:Methane on Mars, 2004

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Methane on Mars, 2004

[sighted]

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."

Both are good

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:It's comeing form the under grround citys there

[Jeppe Salvesen]

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

Re:fart jokes anyone?

[PsyciatricHelp]

I bet Uranus has tons of Methane emmisions.

Let's take that seriously for a moment

[Kupfernigk]

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.

Re:Let's take that seriously for a moment

[PapayaSF]

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.

Oblig. Futurama ref.

[slashdotmsiriv]

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

Re:Send in the drill

[lwsimon]

Is the question "Is there oil on Mars?"