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| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
Please note the words "news" and "The Sun" do not belong in the same sentence.
"Sensationalist dirt rag" and "the Sun" do however, along with "cockknocking evil cunt" and "Rupert Murdoch" |
lol sorry i'm not very familiar with british press, but the perennial gossiper murdoch, i do know of. by comparison, here's a real news article on the recent findings...
| quote: | Mars Has Methane, But Life?
By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
15 January 2009
It's taken 5 years, but planetary scientists are finally confident that they have detected methane on Mars. At a press conference today at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., and in a paper published online today in Science, researchers announced that all the painstaking observations, analysis, and reanalysis now reveal summertime plumes of the gas from three regions on the planet. On Earth, methane is a byproduct of living bacteria, but whether that's what's producing the gas on Mars is anyone's guess.
The first news of martian methane claims came in 2004 (Science, 26 March 2004, p. 1953). But the early data--from spacecraft and ground-based telescopes--were controversial. Spacecraft were not detecting all of the spectroscopic signatures of the gas, for example, and ground-based observers had to contend with interference from methane and other trace gases in Earth's atmosphere.
At today's press conference, astronomer Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, declared success. "We've eliminated most of the gremlins that were bothering us," he said. The biggest problem was working out how to reliably remove terrestrial contamination from the team's spectra. "We've done a lot of work that makes the current results robust," Mumma says. Planetary scientist Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, agrees. Measuring martian methane "is really at the ragged edge of things," he says, but "I think the detection is pretty solid."
Beyond detection, the observations reveal that the methane averages 33 parts per billion in the summer but essentially disappears afterward. About 0.6 kilograms of methane emerge each second in the summer, Mumma said, which is comparable to the emissions from a natural oil seep near Santa Barbara, California. Perhaps, he said, the martian methane is continually produced beneath the surface but only released when summer warming breaks an icy seal on the surface.
The source? No one can say. Methane-generating bacteria might be living off hydrogen produced by rock, as studies kilometers down in South African gold mines have shown. Or, purely inorganic reactions between water and rock rich in the mineral olivine could do it, as found in hot springs near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Either way, the methane could have been produced ages ago, noted Mumma's colleague Geronimo Villanueva of Goddard, and been trapped in deep ice until warming released it. The next chance for nailing down the methane's origins may come in 2011 when the Mars Science Laboratory rover launches with the ability to measure the isotopic composition of the gas.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cg...009/115/1?rss=1 |
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| quote: | Mars Methane Found, Raising Possibility of Life
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
Jan. 15, 2008 -- Scientists have discovered rich plumes of methane on Mars that not only disappear quickly, but are replenished by unknown sources that could be biological or geochemical in origin.
"Either way, it's very interesting," planetary scientist Michael Mumma, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told Discovery News. "Mars is not a dead planet."
Mumma and colleagues used infrared spectrometers on three ground-based telescopes to monitor concentrations of methane in Mars' atmosphere over time and made a rather startling discovery: Not only does the planet have methane-rich plumes over several discrete sites, it also has an as-yet undetermined method for replenishing the methane that puts Earthly processes to shame.
On Earth, most of the methane in the atmosphere comes from cows' digestive processes and bacteria in wetlands and landfills. It also is produced by geo-thermal processes, such as volcanic eruptions and decaying coal.
The gas is broken down over time by ultraviolet light from the sun.
On Mars, "it's clear that there is a mechanism at work that is more efficient than photochemistry -- on the order of 100 times more efficient," Mumma said.
Whatever the source, methane on Mars should stick around for about 300 years, all things being equal. Instead, Mumma and his team, who published their findings in this week's issue of Science, found that over parts of Mars the methane is disappearing in a span of time as short as one year.
"We really can't tell if it's biological or geochemical at this time," Mumma added. "On Earth, it can be produced by either mechanism."
The definitive way to determine the methane's origins is to analyze its isotopes. Methane produced from biological sources on Earth has distinctively different isotopic ratios than methane generated by geochemical processes.
"There's nothing in place on Mars today that can take a whack at this puzzle," said Cornell University's Steve Squyres, the lead scientist behind the Mars rover twins, Spirit and Opportunity, which have been scouring the planet for more than five years in search of evidence for past water.
Isotopic analysis would require landing a well-equipped robotic science laboratory in a methane-rich area for local analysis, or retrieving samples for return to Earth. While scientists have hopes both missions will fly, neither will happen in the immediate future.
NASA last month delayed this year's launch of the Mars Science Laboratory to 2011 due to technical issues. Managers also eliminated a leading potential landing site, the methane-rich Nili Fossae, from contention because of concerns the terrain would be too risky for landing.
But scientists don't plan to sit around and wait for new tools. A new effort is underway to search for other gases that, like methane, are tied to biological processes on Earth. Targeted compounds include ethane, propane and hydrocarbons.
Another line of inquiry will be expanded to try and figure out the chemistry and physics behind the rapid breakdown of Mars' methane. Based on data from as far back as the 1970s-era Viking probes, scientists suspect Mars has strong oxidants, such as hydrogen peroxide, to do the job, but they haven't pieced together exactly how the process would work.
Mumma says the first order of business should be to thoroughly map Mars' methane to determine where it is being released and how that process changes over time.
The biggest plume of methane discovered during the three-year study released about a pound of methane per second, roughly the same rate as the Coal Oil Plant Natural Reserve near Santa Barbara, Calif.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/...thane-life.html |
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| quote: | Mars May Still Be A Living Planet, Methane In Atmosphere Reveals
ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2009) — A team of NASA and university scientists has achieved the first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This discovery indicates the planet is either biologically or geologically active.
The team found methane in the Martian atmosphere by carefully observing the planet throughout several Mars years with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility and the W.M. Keck telescope, both at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The team used spectrometers on the telescopes to spread the light into its component colors, as a prism separates white light into a rainbow. The team detected three spectral features called absorption lines that together are a definitive signature of methane.
"Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas," said Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif." Mumma is lead author of a paper describing this research that will appear in Science Express on Thursday.
Methane, four atoms of hydrogen bound to a carbon atom, is the main component of natural gas on Earth. Astrobiologists are interested in these data because organisms release much of Earth's methane as they digest nutrients. However, other purely geological processes, like oxidation of iron, also release methane.
"Right now, we do not have enough information to tell whether biology or geology -- or both -- is producing the methane on Mars," Mumma said. "But it does tell us the planet is still alive, at least in a geologic sense. It is as if Mars is challenging us, saying, 'hey, find out what this means.' "
If microscopic Martian life is producing the methane, it likely resides far below the surface where it is warm enough for liquid water to exist. Liquid water is necessary for all known forms of life, as are energy sources and a supply of carbon.
"On Earth, microorganisms thrive about 1.2 to 1.9 miles beneath the Witwatersrand basin of South Africa, where natural radioactivity splits water molecules into molecular hydrogen and oxygen," Mumma said. "The organisms use the hydrogen for energy. It might be possible for similar organisms to survive for billions of years below the permafrost layer on Mars, where water is liquid, radiation supplies energy, and carbon dioxide provides carbon. Gases, like methane, accumulated in such underground zones might be released into the atmosphere if pores or fissures open during the warm seasons, connecting the deep zones to the atmosphere at crater walls or canyons."
It is possible a geologic process produced the Martian methane, either now or eons ago. On Earth, the conversion of iron oxide into the serpentine group of minerals creates methane, and on Mars this process could proceed using water, carbon dioxide and the planet's internal heat. Although there is no evidence of active volcanism on Mars today, ancient methane trapped in ice cages called clathrates might be released now.
"We observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane," said co-author Geronimo Villanueva of the Catholic University of America in Washington. "The plumes were emitted during the warmer seasons, spring and summer, perhaps because ice blocking cracks and fissures vaporized, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air."
According to the team, the plumes were seen over areas that show evidence of ancient ground ice or flowing water. Plumes appeared over the Martian northern hemisphere regions such as east of Arabia Terra, the Nili Fossae region, and the south-east quadrant of Syrtis Major, an ancient volcano about 745 miles across.
One method to test whether life produced this methane is by measuring isotope ratios. Isotopes of an element have slightly different chemical properties, and life prefers to use the lighter isotopes. A chemical called deuterium is a heavier version of hydrogen. Methane and water released on Mars should show distinctive ratios for isotopes of hydrogen and carbon if life was responsible for methane production. It will take future missions, like NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, to discover the origin of the Martian methane.
The research was funded by the Planetary Astronomy Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington and the Astrobiology Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The University of Hawaii manages NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...90115164621.htm |
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