This could be the biggest news about our solar system - ever!!
NASA’s rover Curiosity has detected that Mars's atmosphere contains methane gas... maybe from a life-form!!
The detected methane is unlikely to be from past volcanoes, because methane only last for 300 years. So it could be from living organisms!
Also, the amount in the atmosphere varies, suggesting a non-geological origin!
Martian organisms may be alive and well today, perhaps living under the surface! Wow!
Washington State University's Schulze-Makuch confirmed the biology potential. He said, "Methane is quite a rare gas in hydrothermal/volcanic exhalations; thus a methane detection with the rover would be exciting and could point to biology,"
The space scientist Chris McKay, who is also a Mars specialist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, said to SPACE.com, "What was surprising in the Mars Express results was the variability. Methane
should have a lifetime of 300 years." (That means this methane discovery isn't from a long-forgotten past geological or biological source - it's from a current source...)
Astronomy graduate, Malynda Chizek, of New Mexico State University, used the NASA/Ames Mars Atmospheric General Circulation Model, and unexpectedly found the methane varies in abundance quickly. The amount of methane in the atmosphere may also fluctuate seasonally, which "might suggest some sort of biological origin."
"About 95 percent of the methane in Earth’s atmosphere is a product of biology (such as cows)," Chizek said, when she showed her findings at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS). "The number of cows required to equal the amount of methane on Mars is about 5 million cows."
Unless different data or another explanation is found, the only questions remaining are, what type of life form lives and Mars, and where...
NASA’s rover Curiosity has detected that Mars's atmosphere contains methane gas... maybe from a life-form!!
The detected methane is unlikely to be from past volcanoes, because methane only last for 300 years. So it could be from living organisms!
Also, the amount in the atmosphere varies, suggesting a non-geological origin!
Martian organisms may be alive and well today, perhaps living under the surface! Wow!
Washington State University's Schulze-Makuch confirmed the biology potential. He said, "Methane is quite a rare gas in hydrothermal/volcanic exhalations; thus a methane detection with the rover would be exciting and could point to biology,"
The space scientist Chris McKay, who is also a Mars specialist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, said to SPACE.com, "What was surprising in the Mars Express results was the variability. Methane
should have a lifetime of 300 years." (That means this methane discovery isn't from a long-forgotten past geological or biological source - it's from a current source...)
Astronomy graduate, Malynda Chizek, of New Mexico State University, used the NASA/Ames Mars Atmospheric General Circulation Model, and unexpectedly found the methane varies in abundance quickly. The amount of methane in the atmosphere may also fluctuate seasonally, which "might suggest some sort of biological origin."
"About 95 percent of the methane in Earth’s atmosphere is a product of biology (such as cows)," Chizek said, when she showed her findings at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS). "The number of cows required to equal the amount of methane on Mars is about 5 million cows."
Unless different data or another explanation is found, the only questions remaining are, what type of life form lives and Mars, and where...
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