New York Times has reported that NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars has discovered startlingly
high amounts of methane in the air.
Existence of Methane may be the indication of existence of Life on Mars.
It could be a sign of microbes living on the red planet today.
But NASA has not yet officially announced about the possibility of aliens living on
Mars.
An associate administrator from NASA's Science Missions Directorate has tweeted his opinion.
In his tweet, he is saying that, While increased methane levels measured by Mars Curiosity
are exciting, as possible indicators for life, it’s important to remember this is an early
science result.
To maintain scientific integrity, the science team will continue to analyze the data before
confirming results.
Also he is saying that We don’t yet know where methane on Mars comes from.
A leading idea is that methane on Mars is being released from underground reservoirs
created by past biology.
But sometimes, methane is a sign of geology rather than biology.
Here on Earth, most methane comes from life , mainly from microbes in the guts of cows
but also from the decay of plant matter and other biological processes in places like
wetlands.
But based on this fact we can not confirm the existence of Life on Mars.
Because as NASA admin tweeted, sometimes, methane is a sign of geology rather than biology.
On Earth, for instance, volcanoes produce methane.
There are no currently active volcanoes on Mars, but scientists are studying the possibilities
of methane being released through other geological processes as well.
These processes involve reactions of carbon from carbonate rocks or CO2 gas, with hydrogen
from liquid water.
At the right temperatures these reactions produce methane.
The methane Curiosity has been sniffing could be evidence of these reactions.
On our planet, methane can come from many sources including oil and gas systems, coal
mining, landfills and wastewater, and microbial metabolism in wetland ecosystems.
At the other end of the solar system, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has found methane
on Pluto.
Some mountains on the dwarf planet are dusted with methane snow.
Despite these facts, Scientists believe that the Methane on Mars can represent Life on
Mars.
They assume that any methane detected now on Mars must have been released recently.
Because sunlight and chemical reactions would break up the molecules of Methane in Martian
Air within a few centuries.
So, they beleive that the currently detected Methane must have been released recently,
and most probably by the microbial descendants of past Life which could have migrated underground
and persisted.
Anyway, it is also possible that the methane is ancient, trapped inside Mars for millions
of years but escaping intermittently through cracks.
Scientists first reported detections of methane on Mars a decade and a half ago using measurements
from Mars Express, an orbiting spacecraft built by the European Space Agency, as well
as from telescopes on Earth.
However, those findings were at the edge of the detection power of these tools, and many
researchers thought the methane might just be a mirage of mistaken data.
When Curiosity arrived on Mars in 2012, it looked for methane and found nothing, or at
least less than 1 part per billion in the atmosphere.
Then, in 2013 it detected a sudden spike,.
The measurement this week found 21 parts per billion of methane, or three times the 2013
spike.
So, we can expect some major annoncement fron NASA soon.