An Idea

[Bogie]

Some interesting data about Mars fyi.


The Viking landers performed experiments to determine the existence of life on Mars. The results were somewhat ambiguous but most scientists now believe that they show no evidence for life on Mars (there is still some controversy, however). Optimists point out that only two tiny samples were measured and not from the most favorable locations. More experiments will be done by future missions to Mars.
A small number of meteorites (the SNC meteorites) are believed to have originated on Mars. On 1996 Aug 6, David McKay et al announced what they thought might be evidence of ancient Martian microorganisms in the meteorite ALH84001. Though there is still some controversy, the majority of the scientific community has not accepted this conclusion. If there is or was life on Mars, we still haven't found it.

http://nineplanets.org/mars.html

[Profpat]

It is interesting that they found water on Mars a basic ingredient I believe to life. However as you and I were exploring this issue I guess water is abundant in meteors and astroids. If it's liquid water however it would be only the second planet that has it that we are aware of. Do you know if it's liquid or ice?

[Bogie]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...e-on-mars.html

I think this article has a little more info but I have to check the other one again. Yes, here is the extra text and a pic.

"Two, it turns out on earth there just hasn't been hardly any work done at all to show whether gypsum ever includes within it preserved evidence of former life.
"The age doesn't matter. We just didn't know that fossils and organic matter and things like that were well preserved within gypsum.
"So, three, it turns out that now we have made that first step we are going to find out how widespread it is in other sulphate deposits on earth.
"And those lines of evidence will then give us a way to justify going to Mars and looking at gypsum because it looks as though based on these findings that is going to turn out to be a really excellent place to find evidence of ancient life, regardless of age, if in fact it is there."
Five experts took part in last night's press conference to celebrate 50 years of astrobiology research.
Dr Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, said the only way of being sure there is life on Mars was to bring back a sample of Mars rock.
He also said that the detection of methane in the martian atmosphere - as revealed exclusively by The Sun - raised the possibility that there was still life on Mars today.
"Methane is a molecule that should go away very quickly. We need to send a mission to find out if the source is biological.

Strange ... a spaceprobe orbiting Mars has sent back amazing pictures


"We also need to send a mission to return samples from Mars. That would enable scientists to find out whether Mars might ever have harboured life.
"If we are ever going to show if there was ever life on Mars, I think we're going to have to study samples back on Earth."
Almost 30 other NASA missions to discover life in space - including one to bring back rocks from Mars - have already been planned.
There are also plans to visit Jupiter's moon Europa to explore its deep underground ocean and a moon of Saturn, Enceladus, which spouted ice volcanoes.
Long-term missions will also return to Saturn's biggest moon Titan, sending a balloon flying through its atmosphere and landing a probe in its surface lakes.
Future missions would also visit comets.
NASA scientists have been searching for extraterrestrial life on other planets for some time.
Last November the space organisation launched the Kepler space telescope to look for Earth-size planets in this galaxy.
The telescope is on a three-and-a-half-year mission to find planets.
NASA has so far been able to download data - but many believe there are aliens out there.
British physicist Stephen Hawking said this week aliens might be traveling through the cosmos right now - but he warned they might have evil intentions.


Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...#ixzz0mRSK77Lj

[Profpat]

Well I asked Max for evidence and you delivered Bogie. My compliments to you sir. I'm all for funding NASA and any missions it may wish to explore this possibility. If it is truly life I guess we'll have to come up new odds for life formation. I hope they discover the answer before I shuffel off to my own planet.

[Profpat]

Maybe we'll be Hawking's aliens (big multicolored ones) that will exploit the microbes and take away their resources?

[G_burnett]

Well I asked Max for evidence and you delivered Bogie. My compliments to you sir. I'm all for funding NASA and any missions it may wish to explore this possibility. If it is truly life I guess we'll have to come up new odds for life formation. I hope they discover the answer before I shuffel off to my own planet.

hmm well here is a shot of a ufo .... red dot ? well you asked ... enjoy !

[RascalPuff]

Perhaps the aliens with their superpowers detected the ennui of Prof. Hawking; decided he was pining for a little P.R. and mind controlled him into subjecting potentially dangerous aliens so that people all over this planet are now engaged in chatter about Prof. Hawking chattering about the potential formidability of aliens (segue to echo chamber, squared...).

And it seems to work pretty good, too... : )

[labelwench]

Seems the methane on Mars idea has been around for awhile?


Last Updated: Monday, 29 March, 2004, 00:47 GMT 01:47 UK

Methane on Mars could signal life
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor


Is there life beneath the soil?

Methane has been found in the Martian atmosphere which scientists say could be a sign that life exists today on Mars.

It was detected by telescopes on Earth and has recently been confirmed by instruments onboard the European Space Agency's orbiting Mars Express craft.

Methane lives for a short time in the Martian atmosphere so it must be being constantly replenished.

There are two possible sources: either active volcanoes, none of which have been found yet on Mars, or microbes.

Spectral signature

The spectral signature of the gas was seen by the Infrared Telescope on Hawaii and the Gemini South Observatory in Chile.
Scientists see two possibilities, both of them scientifically important, but one of them is sensational


Scientists operating the Mars Express Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (FPS) have announced they have detected the presence of methane in the Red Planet's atmosphere, too.

The world's largest telescope, the twin Keck facility on Hawaii, has looked but has yet to report its findings.

But further evidence of methane on Mars will be presented at a meeting next month by a consortium of astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope.

Volcanic explanation

Methane is not a stable molecule in the Martian atmosphere. If it was not replenished in some way, it would only last a few hundred years before it vanished.

Scientists see two possibilities, both of them scientifically important, but one of them is sensational.

Nasa's Infrared Telescope detected methane last year

It is possible that the methane is being produced by volcanic activity. Lava deposited on to the surface, or released underground, could produce the gas.

This explanation has some difficulties, however. So far, no active volcanic hotspots have been detected on the planet by the many spacecraft currently in orbit.

If active volcanism were responsible then it would be a major discovery with important implications. The heat released by any volcanism would melt the vast quantities of sub-surface ice discovered on the planet, producing an environment suitable for life.

Life on Mars?

On Earth, there are organisms called methanogens - microbes that produce methane from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. These organisms do not need oxygen to thrive, and they are thought to be the type of microbes that could possibly live on Mars.

The twin US space agency rovers that landed on the Red Planet in January will be unable to answer the question of the methane's origin as they are designed for geological work.

But future missions could include sensors to analyse the methane to determine where it came from.

The failed Beagle 2 mission had a device that could have sniffed the Martian atmosphere for methane.

[labelwench]

Rapid destruction of methane makes Martian environment too hostile to support life
August 13th, 2009 - 2:11 pm ICT by ANI -


Washington, August 13 (ANI): A new study has concluded that if there’s any life on Mars, it’s not likely to exist on or just below the planet’s surface because rapid destruction of methane would make the Red Planet’s environment too hostile to support life.

The discovery of rich plumes of methane on Mars earlier this year fed theories that the planet could host underground colonies of microorganisms.

But, according to a report in Discovery News, rapid destruction of methane suggests that the planet’s environment may be too hostile to support life.

Computer models show that if chemical reactions on the planet’s surface are responsible for the rapidly declining levels of methane on Mars, it would leave “little hope that life as we know it can exist at present or that evidence of past life can be preserved in the shallow surface layer,” said Franck Lefevre and Francois Forget of the Universitaire Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

On Earth, most of the methane in the atmosphere comes from cows’ digestive processes and bacteria in wetlands and landfills.

Methane is also produced by geothermal processes, such as volcanic eruptions and decaying coal.

Scientists are trying to understand not only what is releasing methane into the Martian atmosphere, but also what kills it off.

All things being equal, the gas should exist for centuries on Mars and be evenly spread throughout its atmosphere.

But, Lefevre and Forget found that the methane disappears in less than 200 days.

“This implies an unidentified methane loss process that is 600 times faster than predicted,” according to the researchers.

Dr Michael Mumma, a NASA scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, suggests that chemicals in the soil may be speeding the destruction of Martian methane.

“We haven’t tested that yet, so the plot thickens,” said Mumma.

He also points out that subterranean microbial colonies could still be responsible for the gas, which might be released from cracks in cliff walls.

Mumma and colleagues will attempt to pinpoint the source of Martian methane and look for other gases tied to biological activity during a four-month observation campaign using Europe’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Keck telescope in Hawaii. (ANI)

[labelwench]

Okay, this is my last offering on the topic. You can rest your weary eyeballs, lol....


The enigma of methane on Mars

Methane, an indicator of life?

Methane (CH4) is an organic molecule present in gaseous form in the Earth's atmosphere. More than 90% of methane on our home planet is produced by living organisms. The recent detection of plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars is of great interest because of its potential biological origin, though other explanations may also be possible.


Elysium Planitia - raised levels of methane were detected by a Mars Express instrument
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Methane breaks up in the presence of ultraviolet solar radiation. Based on photochemical models and on the current understanding of the composition of the Martian atmosphere, methane has a chemical lifetime of about 300-600 years, which is very short on geological time scales. This implies that the methane that is observed today cannot have been produced 4.5 billion years ago, when the planets formed. So what can explain the presence of this gas on the Red Planet?


One possibility is a biological origin. The discovery of microbial life 2 to 3 kilometres beneath the surface of the Witwatersrand basin in South Africa led scientists to consider that similar organisms could live, or have lived in the past, below the permafrost layer on Mars. By analogy with Earth, the biological origin of Martian methane could be explained by the existence of micro-organisms, called methanogenes, existing deep under the surface, and producing methane as a result of their metabolism.

If the methane on Mars is biotic, two scenarios could be considered: either long-extinct microbes, which disappeared millions of years ago, have left the methane frozen in the Martian upper subsurface, and this gas is being released into the atmosphere today as temperatures and pressure near the surface change, or some very resistant methane-producing organisms still survive.

An alternative explanation is that the methane is geological in origin. It could be produced, for example, by the oxidation of iron, similar to what occurs in terrestrial hot springs, or in active volcanoes. This gas could have been trapped in solid forms of water, or 'cages', that can preserve methane of ancient origin for a long time. These structures are known as 'clathrate hydrates'.

A geochemical process called serpentinisation could also produce the abiotic methane. Serpentinization is a geological low-temperature metamorphic process involving heat, water, and changes in pressure. It occurs when olivine, a mineral present on Mars, reacts with water, forming another mineral called serpentine, in the presence of carbon dioxide and some catalysts. When certain catalysts are also present, the hydrogen combines with the carbon to form methane. On Mars it is possible to find all these primary elements: olivine, carbon dioxide and some catalysts, but the chemical reaction needs liquid water to occur. This implies that, if the Martian methane comes from serpentinisation, it could be related to subsurface hydrothermal activity.

Concentrations of methane have been observed in 2003 and 2006 in three specific regions of Mars: Terra Sabae, Nili Fossae and Syrtis Major, and data suggest that water once flowed over these areas. Deep liquid water areas below the ice layer would be able to provide a habitat for microorganisms, or a favourable place for the hydro-geochemical production of methane. Further processing in the Martian atmosphere may play an important role that accounts for the observed seasonal variability. Whether geochemical or biochemical in origin, the variation in concentrations of methane that has been measured indicates that Mars could still be active today.

One way to confirm the biological origin of methane would be to measure the isotope ratios of carbon and hydrogen, the two elements in methane. Life on Earth tends to use lighter isotopes, for example, more Carbon-12 than Carbon-13, because this requires less energy for bonding.

For further progress to be made in unveiling the origin of methane on Mars, future space missions with new technologies devised to better characterise the Martian environment and its subsurface will be necessary.

Confirming the presence of methane on Mars, a goal of future joint ESA/NASA missions

Observations from the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) on ESA's Mars Express and from very high spectral resolution spectrometers on ground-based telescopes, have detected variable amounts of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. Could this be evidence for life on Mars? International space agencies are planning an ambitious, long-term Mars Robotic Exploration Programme to find a definitive answer to this most enduring question.

The scientific objectives of the joint ESA/NASA ExoMars programme 2016-2018 include: searching for signs of past and present life on Mars, studying the water and geochemical environment as a function of depth in the shallow subsurface, and investigating Martian atmospheric trace gases and their sources.

The ESA/NASA ExoMars programme 2016-2018
Credit: ESA


To achieve these objectives, the 2016 ESA-led ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, one of two missions in the ExoMars programme, will measure and map methane and other important trace gases with high sensitivity to provide insights into the nature of the source through the study of gas ratios and isotopes.

The 2018 ESA ExoMars Rover will search for two types of life signatures, morphological and chemical, with an accurate study of the geological context. Morphological information related to biological processes may be preserved on the surface of rocks or under the surface. Since the surface of Mars is oxidised, the ExoMars drill has been designed to penetrate the surface and obtain samples from well-consolidated (hard) formations, at various depths, down to 2 m.