wa1ex
Temporal Navigator
Viking\'s Methane
Viking's methane
JULY 20, 1976. Gilbert Levin is on the edge of his seat.
Millions of kilometres away on Mars, the Viking landers have scooped up some soil
and mixed it with carbon-14-labelled nutrients.
The mission's scientists have all agreed that if Levin's instruments on board the landers detect emissions of carbon-14-containing methane from the soil, then there must be life on Mars.
Viking reports a positive result. Something is ingesting the nutrients, metabolizing them, and then belching out gas laced with carbon-14.
Methane on Mars
As methane cannot persist in the Martian atmosphere for more than a few hundred years, its presence suggests either that it is being replenished by some unidentified volcanic or geologic process, or that some kind of extremophile life form similar to some existing on Earth is metabolizing carbon dioxide and hydrogen and producing methane.
In March 2004, the orbiting ESA probe Mars Express reported detecting methane in the Martian atmosphere,[6][7][8] which had earlier been suggested by observations of the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope on Hawaii and the Gemini South observatory in Chile in 2003.[9]
Others have proposed that the a process called serpentinization, wherein the mineral olivine is converted into serpentine in the presence of liquid water, may be occurring somewhere in the subsurface of Mars and releasing enough methane to explain the observations.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars
http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524911.600
Viking's methane
JULY 20, 1976. Gilbert Levin is on the edge of his seat.
Millions of kilometres away on Mars, the Viking landers have scooped up some soil
and mixed it with carbon-14-labelled nutrients.
The mission's scientists have all agreed that if Levin's instruments on board the landers detect emissions of carbon-14-containing methane from the soil, then there must be life on Mars.
Viking reports a positive result. Something is ingesting the nutrients, metabolizing them, and then belching out gas laced with carbon-14.
Methane on Mars
As methane cannot persist in the Martian atmosphere for more than a few hundred years, its presence suggests either that it is being replenished by some unidentified volcanic or geologic process, or that some kind of extremophile life form similar to some existing on Earth is metabolizing carbon dioxide and hydrogen and producing methane.
In March 2004, the orbiting ESA probe Mars Express reported detecting methane in the Martian atmosphere,[6][7][8] which had earlier been suggested by observations of the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope on Hawaii and the Gemini South observatory in Chile in 2003.[9]
Others have proposed that the a process called serpentinization, wherein the mineral olivine is converted into serpentine in the presence of liquid water, may be occurring somewhere in the subsurface of Mars and releasing enough methane to explain the observations.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars
http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524911.600