Chapter sixty five its a mystery as NASA scientists are looking for clues as to the cause of methane plumes that have been detected on Mars again. As scientists say the rover, is now sniffing the air using its sensitive laboratory equipment, thus picked up a dramatic tenfold increase in methane gas this lasted for several weeks. The find, is described 2014 at the American Geophysical Union as published online by 'journal Science.
This reignites an already flammable issue the chances for methane-linked to life on Mars maybe a definable possibility.As methane gas has made a comeback on Mars. As with dairy life on Earth could their be life beyond Earth? NASA's chief scientist would like to find it have it analysed as fundamental. "It opens up a whole debate of methane on Mars once more was there basic life on Mars," said lead author Christopher Webster, lead for the rover's Tunable Laser Spectrometer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We thought we closed that chapter with a no, but now we're on to the next chapter where would it exist of like Earth gas exist in sedimentary rocks." In 2003, ground-based telescopes picked up signs of an enormous amount of methane - as much as 45 parts per billion - coming from the Red Planet in plumes. As NASA's Curiosity rover quashed the hopes of scientists and dreamers alike in 2013 when it found scant signs of methane on the Red Planet. On Earth, most of this gas is produced by living things and a healthy dose of this comes from organic molecules. So onto our rust-hued neighbor would have given researchers hope of finding signs of any life.
At the time, those results were hotly debated, particularly since the methane readings eventually disappeared and did not return. Some argued that the readings were off; the scientists stuck by their measurements. Curiosity, with a suite of high-tech instruments loaded in its belly, was expected to help settle the debate.In 2013, after testing the air for roughly eight months using its Tunable Laser Spectrometer, the rover gave the scientific community an answer - though perhaps not the one that many researchers had hoped for.
Methane levels were extremely low - no more than 1.3 parts per billion, a tiny fraction of what had been detected 10 years earlier."There was basically no methane on Mars, and that was a big disappointment to the planetary community," Webster said. "So we thought we had closed the book on the Mars methane story at the time." But then, around Thanksgiving last year, the rover picked up a strange increase - methane levels in the air jumped from an average of about 0.7 parts per billion to about 5 parts per billion. How much methane on Mars? Zero. Findings a setback in search for life. How much methane on Mars? Zero. Findings a setback in search for life "We were very surprised - we said, 'What the heck is going on?'" Webster said. When they checked a week later, the methane had risen further, to 7 parts per billion. They waited a month and still saw 7 parts per billion. Three weeks after that, it was 9 parts per billion. During this strange spike, the methane levels averaged 7.2 parts per billion - a 10-fold increase from the baseline average. Six weeks later, it had completely disappeared.
"The methane measurements are saying something about modern Mars," said study co-author Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, lead scientist for the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument package (which includes the Tunable Laser Spectrometer). "It's alive at some level; it's living and breathing and giving off little spurts of methane somehow. " The scientists do not know much about the origins of this methane.
It seems to be coming in from the north, though it's not clear whether the plume is big and far away, or small and close by. (They think it's small and fairly nearby because it disappeared fairly quickly, by methane's standards.) "It does indeed mean that we have an active planet," said Michael Mumma, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who led the research that picked up the 2003 methane signal. "We do not know where the methane is coming from yet, nor do we know whether it's generated by biology or generated by geochemistry. But we do know how to go about testing that. "Mars' once-thick atmosphere now stripped; bad news for life? These are questions that Curiosity may help answer as it continues exploring Mt. Sharp, a three-mile-high mountain in the middle of Gale Crater.
This also does not at all mean that there are or were microbes on Mars - the gas could be the product of geophysical processes. In fact it's unclear whether the methane is old or new - it could have been stored in ice traps called clathrates under the ground for eons and recently released upon the ice's melting, Webster pointed out."I personally feel that one has to treat each possibility as equal to the other," said Mumma, who was not involved in the current research.
"If it's not biology, if it's geochemistry, then that tells us we have a window into the interior processes of the planet. That's very important. If it is biology, then that's important too, for other reasons. It would mean that there would be likely an independent origin of life. "Some researchers expressed doubt that the results were free of contamination from the rover itself."There is considerable methane on the rover," Kevin Zahnle, a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center who was not involved in the work, said in an email. "They are looking for Martian methane through a cloud of their own methane."Though the team has been diligent, Zahnle said, "they can not rule out the possibility that something funny is going on."
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