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Martian Methane May Be Created By Lifeforms
Following our recent discussions about the growing evidence pointing to possible life on Mars, reader skywatcher2501 writes with news of a study that has ruled out one possible explanation for the levels of methane seen on that planet — that it might be replenished by disintegrating meteors entering the atmosphere. So two theories remain: either the gas is created as a by-product of reactions between volcanic rock and water, or it is a by-product of a lifeform's metabolism.
that Martians need some beano eh? Also, first post BTW...
Methane concentrations peak in an area on the planet opposite the famous face on mars.
Now the ecozealots will decry our spoiling of the natural martial environment, and will protest any attempt at colonization or terraformation as the destruction of a precious natural world.
That it is life. I've said it before so I won't reiterate with a long post, but if there's life on Mars, that proves life isn't just unique to Earth. This planet isn't a fluke. If there's life on Mars, then it can be *anywhere*
What an amazing thing that would be.
Almost as good as the BBC TV series...
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
It seems possible that life existed in the distant past on Mars, leaving behind methane deposits much like oil and natural gas deposits here on Earth...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
This spells disaster in the form of global climate change on mars! Who wants to be the first to martian up and buy some methane offsets?
The problem is that on mars all methane should vanish in months due to oxidizing soil. Therefore something must be replenishing it.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
"So two theories remain: either the gas is created as a by-product of reactions between volcanic rock and water, or it is a by-product of a lifeform's metabolism."
Or C: There is some, as of yet, unidentified method of methane production.
... get ready to hear this word a lot: "cross contamination" from the bombardment period.
I know - I know. I'm not advocating it - I'm just saying: Don't be surprised.
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Yes and I think it is also theoretically possible that there was life on mars until about half an hour after the first probe landed.
And I believe it was the great Dr. Hansford Solo that said "What a incredible smell you've discovered!"
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I saw recently that NASA was leaning towards judging structures on a few meteorites as organic in nature. Meaning, we could have been derived from, or seeded life on Mars. Multiple times.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I, for one, welcome our new flatulent Martian overlords.
there are microorganisms living in the Martian soil that are producing methane gas as a by-product of their metabolic processes
Finally, someone that slashdotters can relate to!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Carbon offsets are for Methane too as Methane is C(H4)...
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Who knows, it could just be a piece of pre-animate matter caught in the matrix.
The latest issue of WorldWatch magazine had an interesting piece on the contribution of methane to AGW ... the general conclusion was that convincing humans to alter their diet (less/no meat) will have more impact than convincing them to alter their driving habits.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
The problem is that on mars all methane should vanish in months due to oxidizing soil. Therefore something must be replenishing it.
Its a more complicated problem than that. First of all, there is no viable explanation for a source, assuming no lifeforms on mars, no active volcanoes, not enough meteors... Secondly, methane is localized and produced at weird rates, almost like weather... errr growing seasons... Third, methane is photochemically unstable in UV, it should all disappear in a couple centuries, except it is measured as disappearing much more quickly, VERY coincidentally about the timeframe of one martian year, so grasping at straws, it must be "oxidizing soil" or something. Fourthly the ESA guys claim when they detect methane, it also coincidentally comes along with yummy water vapor (actually, probably fizzy carbonated water crossed with stinky swamp gas)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars#Methane
Now it is refreshing after the quack climatologists basically making stuff up to "prove" their hypothesis, to see that real scientists studying mars are very carefully and appropriately skeptical about declaring martian life. But eventually Occams Razor kicks in and the complicated non-life workarounds become more ridiculous than admitting it makes more sense to assume there's life on mars. I think that tipping point is extremely close.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Obviously the solution is to genetically engineer the bacteria in ruminant stomachs to produce no methane....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
"Decay" implies the breakdown of biological tissue by... you guessed it, micro-organisms. In places where there is not much bacteria, like the antarctic, things that die do not decay noticeably over hundreds of years or more.
So, I doubt decay from dead things is producing the methane.
Cows ruined their own planet before they came to earth millenia ago.
Its this migration that the child's nursery rhyme is referencing in the line "the cow jumped over the moon".
They're now doing the same to the earth.
As I understand it, we know there's olivine on Mars and that there's water on Mars. Assuming the laws of physics operate the same on Mars as on Earth, then you have all the explanation you need for methane on Mars. Serpentinization is the process of reacting olivine with water. It generates methane as a byproduct.
The question isn't whether serpentinization is a source of methane, but rather whether it is the majority source or not. My take is that if the methane production was due to life on Mars, there'd be a lot more methane being produced than a few hundred tons a day. I don't see life on Mars staying in one place over millions much less hundreds of millions of years. But I suppose there's a chance it could happen that way (say if life on Mars is a relatively recent phenoma).
Life on Mars would have been at its prime billions of years ago. Whatever is left now would have to be either fossilised and completely inert, or still reproducing.
Or migrated?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
And ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the argumentum ad hominem.
Let us take a moment to ponder this posters ability to take a tone of superiority, all the while unawares of the stupendous amount of ignorance being displayed by his own statement.
Truly a remarkable creature.
Mars has about 1/2 the radius of the Earth and about 1/10th the mass, which means a significantly smaller gravitational field, even at the surface (about 1/3 the gravity at the surface, and remember that it falls off proportionately to the square of the distance from the center of mass).
While Mars doesn't have a magnetic field any more, I suspect that the reason that Mars's atmosphere is so much thinner than our own has more to do with the lack of mass and corresponding gravity well to hold the gases in than it does the solar wind blowing it away. Recall that Mercury has a magnetic field, and it doesn't really help the planet hold its atmosphere. And lest you think that's because it's so close to the Sun, and thus the subject of stronger solar winds, I'll point out that Ganymede also has a permanent magnetic field and a very thin atmosphere, but its surface pressure is so low that if it were created in a bell jar here on Earth, it would be considered a vacuum.
Some of the recent studies show that it's incomplete magnetic field is actually accelerating the loss of atmosphere.
:-)
Apparently those magnetic domes that were once thought to help retain atmosphere are now acting like ski ramps to help the solar winds blow off more air than if Mars had no magnetic field whatsoever. That's really gotta suck.
Of course, that doesn't preclude the existence of some form of extremophile.
After all, it's had millions of years to adapt to the changing environment that is Mars.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean there is any life on Mars, just that we can't rule it out at this time.
So anyhow, do you know where I can get some more nurplex? This one lost it's flavor years ago...
Pull my tentacle.
Have gnu, will travel.
Titan, which is quite a bit smaller than Mars, has an atmosphere 1.5 times as dense as Earths.
Titan is also extremely cold, and has less agitation of its atmosphere; it has protection from Saturn's magnetic field (which it may be holding onto as it does pass through) and is at a much greater distance from the Sun than Ganymede is; the gases compositing the atmospheres of each are also different, which in consideration of their properties may definitely matter: my point is, that neither singly mass, nor density, nor solar distance, nor composition, nor magnetic properties, i.e. any single variable, is responsible for atmospheric density. Mars, however, is both so close to the Sun to be affected by solar winds, and so mass deficient relative to those other factors, that the planet isn't adequate for holding onto a dense atmosphere (of almost any composition): if it were around a dead star, or floating through space away from agitations, etc., then sure, you'd expect it could hold a dense--perhaps frozen (as much of Mars's atmosphere may, in fact, be, and thus on its surface and in its soil)--[r] atmosphere; but considering the variables for holding the kind of gases we'd even be interested in, it's not much worth our time, except perhaps to mine, or for other conditions for experimentation.
The same, unfortunately, applies to Venus--is inadequate to hold onto the kind of atmosphere we'd be interested in, and would even if its role were reversed with Mars (which would also mean it would be too cold). We on Earth have the sweet spot positionally, in mass, gravitationally, in density, and all the other variables you could think of. I'm happy for it too! : )
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
Neither the source nor the sink of Martian methane is understood, as was discussed by Lefèvre & Forget in Observed variations of methane on Mars unexplained by known atmospheric chemistry and physics (Nature 460, 720-723 (6 August 2009)). Unlike the statement in the spacefellowship.com writeup, the observed methane plumes require a very quick absorption of methane on the surface, which means that the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere is not " a few hundred years" but months or less, maybe even hours or less. Since the shorter the lifetime, the larger the production required to match the observed plumes, we don't know the methane production on Mars to within even 3 orders of magnitude.
We don't know the source, we don't know the sink, and we don't know the production rate, so I personally don't see how biology can be ruled out, despite the editorializing in Lefèvre & Forget.
[Titan is] definitely larger than both Earth or Mercury (thou only by ~1000km on its diameter)
No it isn't.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
The climatologists weren't quacks. As respected a source as the journal Nature made that clear. They were called quacks by people like Limbaugh, who make their millions by stirring shit without any interest in the consequences, as long as they get high ratings, and by the mainstream press, who are too stupid to understand the science and were therefore influenced by the asshole pundits like Limbaugh who were the first to speak on the matter.
So the question now is: Are you an idiot who believes anything the scientifically illiterate press tells you, or are you an idiot who believes anything politically-motivated pundits tell you?
As Nick Boston pointed out (http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf)
this is the worst news the human race has ever received.
The idea is that the Fermi Paradox must be the result of a Great Filter which stymies the creation of long lived intelligent races. The easier it is for life to evolve, the more likely it is that the Filter lies ahead of us, rather than behind.
Therefore microbes on Mars is bad bad news.