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Methane Survey Reveals Mars Is Far From 'Dead'
astroengine writes "The first planet-wide studies of methane on Mars — incorporating billions of measurements made by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft — shows gas concentrations peak in autumn and plummet in winter. Scientists have found significantly higher methane concentrations in the Tharsis, Elysium and Arabia Terrae regions. Tharsis and Elysium are home to Mars' most massive volcanoes and Arabia Terrae has large quantities of subterranean frozen water. This indicates the gas could be generated by geological or biological activity. 'It could be geology or biology, but it is not coming from another source. There is a seasonal pattern, so it could only be a local origin,' Sergio Fonti, with Italy's Universita del Salento, told Discovery News."
I'm glad they found this type of cyclic activity. The sooner we find complex life off-Earth the better.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Don't get me wrong, I like hearing about space updates. But it feels like there's been a ton of "there may be signs that may indicate signs of biological life from stuff we may or may not have overlooked before. Also? It might not be caused by a biological thing."
I want a "we found fucking life" article. Stop teasing me with this nonsense.
Martians label Earth "stupidest planet ever" for measuring their farts billions of times...
The Irregular Webcomic guy has the answer:
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/393.html
They should be looking for small quantities of refined Illudium Q-36
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Someone call Mazlan Othman asap!
FTFA: 'It could be geology or biology, but it is not coming from another source.'
Another source like what? Comets hitting the planet? Isn't geology pretty freaking broad for a category?
That's like looking at a rock on the Earth and saying "Well, we are pretty sure that it either formed here on earth, or it is a meteorite."
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Today the Council of Elders confirmed the rumours that the sinister blue planet third from our star has been engaged in acts so bizarre, so perverted, so far beyond the pink, that the only response can be to prepare for war.
"PERVERSION!", thundered K'Breel, as he addressed the Council:
"The mechanized monsters on the surface of our fair world were not the only harbingers of filth from the Blue Planet. The stink of their own poisonous oxygenated atmosphere wasn't foul enough. Having three quarters of their world covered in liquid dihydrogen monoxide wasn't corrosive enough. The practice of diluting of solutions of ethanol and carbon dioxide with DHMO - and the subsequent use of the DHMO as an intoxicant - wasn't enough. Ever in pursuit of new perversions, we now have confirmation that their orbital robotic stations in orbit around our fair world were placed there to sniff our farts."
When it a junior exobiologist suggested that the lifeforms of the Blue Planet were merely interested in possible commonalities in biochemistry across different evolutionary histories and metabolic pathways, K'Breel had the exobiologist's gelsacs removed for fermentation - by methanogens, the way the Founders intended us to get drunk.
I have those, too. Mine are especially high after dinner.
In further news Saturn's climate and chemical activity is also influenced by seasons.
Using a hydrocarbon as a measuring stick for the presence of life is not a very good indicator. Venus has oceans of the crap sloshing around. doesn't imply life.
Here is what we do. get a bunch of people with a terminal disease that gives them 20 years or so of life left. Or the entire viewing audience of Jersey Shore. Put them on a 1 way rocket to Mars with a crap load of Cheetoes and snack foods. Throw in Lohan as a plaything, she's too cracked out to even notice these days...
Send them there. They can then dig around and when one of them get's eaten by something alive there, then the rest of us here on Earth who are busy dodging bullets, fighting hunger, and dealing with assholes will give two shits about life on Mars. In the mean time some of us have important immediate concerns to deal with besides whether there is a new strain of microbe on Mars.
For instance, the HTC versus the iPhone, or the new season of Dr. Who...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
We have tons of methane mined daily right on Earth. We burn it off at the source because we can't be arsed to pipe it anywhere. If you can't even be bothered piping it from an oil rig, why would you fly it through interplanetary space? I know, bad form, serious reply to non-serious post ;)
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Off the top of my head, outgassing as ice melts during spring and summer, either by release of methane trapped below the ice or possibly in the ice.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's the subterranean Martian buffalo flatulance.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
It could be geology or biology,
Oh, well, that narrows it down.
In other news, physicists said that before the Big Bang there was either something or nothing. Oh, wait, bad example. :-) Ah, I tease you, physicists! Give us a smile.
If they find life, how can they be sure it didn't originate from Earth? I mean, bacteria could have traveled along with the mars rover as free-riders, and may by now have multiplied into billions.
Let's suppose there is life on Mars. We can get a pretty good idea of whether or not it's related to life forms on Earth by examining it and seeing how close it is to organisms here. If it has DNA, we could sequence it.
For instance, suppose it looks a lot like terrestrial bacteria, it has DNA, and its genetic code is nearly identical to or very similar to specific terrestrial bacteria. Then yes, it probably came over as contamination.
Suppose it uses DNA, but it doesn't remotely resemble any living bacteria. This may indicate that it evolved from terrestrial bacteria that came over earlier (i.e., hitched a ride on a meteorite). Or that terrestrial life evolved from a hitchhiking Martian bacteria.
Suppose it uses a slightly different DNA system than ours. For instance, the bases may be slightly different, or it uses only RNA, or something along those lines. Depending on the level of the differences, this could indicate that it evolved independently from terrestrial life, or that it hitchhiked over very early in the development of life.
Suppose the Martian organism doesn't use DNA at all. This may indicate that it's completely independent of terrestrial life. That's assuming that life on Earth always used DNA (or at least RNA), which isn't necessarily true.
If you go that route, how can we be sure that life on Earth didn't originate from Mars?
We did have Martian soil impact earth in the past, so you never know right?
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Great, now we have to worry about global warming on Mars!
I can't believe an article about space, biology, and methane has no comments about Uranus. Slashdot has let me down again.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
What a guy!
Actually, 'biological' should be 'current biological'.
Grab a sample of Martian methane and check its distribution of carbon isotopes. Carbon sequestered thousands or millions of years ago should have different ratios from atmospheric sources (the principle of carbon dating). Current biological activity should reflect the ratios of the existing carbon sources.
Of course, if underground life is munching on 'old' carbon, its farts will look old as well. Just as old as CH4 sequestered a long time ago and leaking to the surface only now.
Have gnu, will travel.
The seasonality doesn't really rule out an external source. On Earth we have seasonal meteorite showers, I guess they could have the same on Mars.
Maybe. Let's say it resembles a bacterium on Earth except for the fact that the one on Mars has organelles or other internal structural features that take a very long time to develop that are absent from the one on Earth (or vice versa). You can then say with some certainty that it wasn't contamination during the Space Age. If further samples indicated that the variation in DNA was so great that the most recent common ancestor to all of them was a few million years ago at the earliest, it's old enough to call it Martian life regardless of the ultimate source of organic matter.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think that is what the scientists are thinking as well. However, given that methane freezes at -182.15C and the average temperatures on Mars are -63C with the lowest recorded temperature of -140C and the highest temperature of 20C, I doubt that it is from methane freezing and thawing. It is possible that the methane is trapped in some other medium which allows it to escape with the temperatures are warmer in the summer.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Be sure to remind as many Christians and Rednecks as possible...
Also pull it out next time somebody says "towel head". Remind them that Baby Jesus was a towel head and they should be more respectful.
No sig today...
No shit! I mean "Shit"...
That's not enough? A entire planet is 'breathing' methane. I'd say that's grounds for some serious exploration.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
There's be a couple of easy ways to check (well, easy compared with the effort of getting a sample back from mars): All life on Earth uses nearly identical DNA codes for particular amino acids. If the recovered organisims use a different one, probably not hitchikers. If they use the same one, it would be sort of like finding that your extraterrestial radio transmission was encoded in ASCII. There are many amino acids, and only 22 are generally found in Earthly life. If the organisim makes extensive use of different ones, you're a winner. Going a little deeper, there are proteins and DNA sequences that are nearly universal in terresteral life.
We do use the methane we get from mining, and, in fact, we do pipe it from refineries to different facilities as fuel. Most notably down south there are many oil refineries paired to hydrogen plants which use steam methane reforming to make large quantities of hydrogen.
I was hoping for a Farnsworth joke :(
No Farnsworth joke, but here's the obligatory Futurama reference.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
It's pining for the canals.
I, for one, welcome our bovine Martian overlords.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
If they use the same one, it would be sort of like finding that your extraterrestial radio transmission was encoded in ASCII.
As you implied with your hitchhiker comment, Mars is a stone's throw away from Earth, literally. I'm willing to bet that any "native" life we find on Mars will share a common root with Earth life, although their most recent common ancestor may have been, oh, 4 billion years ago.
Either that or life (of some kind) is damned near ubiquitous in the universe.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I think the unspoken belief in the scientific community is that it's pointing very heavily towards life on Mars, but the rule of thumb in science is "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and claims don't get much more extraordinary than the claim that life has been found on another world
Mars had a wet, warm history, there is liquid water even on its surface (albeit in small quantities), it had sufficient time to evolve life (more than the appearance of life on earth took), and it also had ample opportunity to get seeded from earth. It probably had large bodies of water over many hundreds of millions of years. There is also suggestive evidence of geologically recent volcanism, which means that there are probably warm pockets deep underground that could still support extremophile life.
Given what we know now, live evolving and surviving on Mars is consistent with what we know and requires no additional explanation. On the other hand, if Mars were found to be completely sterile, that would indeed require some explanation that we don't know yet.
So, the claim "Mars is sterile" is extraordinary; the claim "there is life on Mars" is ordinary albeit still unproven.