Either Martians or Mars has gas

The Red Planet has been spewing clouds of methane, scientists recently revealed. There's a possibility that tiny living organisms along Mars are the source of the boast. Or it could be coming from freezing and thawing processes on the planet.

J. Bell/Cornell, M. Wolff/Space Science Institute, NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Cows and Red Planet have at least one thing in common — methane. Like unhealthy (or farting) cows that produce the gas, the Mars releases clouds of methane, according to a recent study. Researchers wonder whether colonies of bacteria hidden beneath Mars' bloody superficial could be the causal agent.

Educators and Parents, Sign Up for The Cheat Sheet

Period updates to help you economic consumption Science News for Students in the learning environment

Thank you for signing up!

In that respect was a trouble sign language you up.

The boast comes from three distinguishable areas of the major planet, reports Mike Mumma, a NASA scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Doctor of Medicine. At each location, the add up of methane fluctuated end-to-end the year. The biggest plumes were in the Martian summer and the smallest during the major planet's winter.

Other research teams have claimed to recover Martian methane, simply this was the first clip that anyone could say so for sure.

Detecting the methane clouds was No easy task. The scientists measured Mars' methane levels for three Martian years (combining weight to vii Earth years) using three special telescopes happening Earth. These instruments give the sack detect an invisible kind of idle called infrared light. Scientists use these unseeable telescopes to measure gases in blank. But since the telescopes were on Earth, they also measured gases in our atmosphere. So the scientists had to use some tricks to figure out which gases came from Earth and which came from Mars.

"Mumma and his team have been painstakingly overcareful," says Christopher Chyba, an astrobiologist (somebody who studies extraterrestrial life) at Princeton University. "The wages is that we have observations of methane that show variations ended temper and aside location. It's fantastic."

Methane is an cranky compound. Unless in that location is a constant source of the brag, the methane on Mars would eventually disappear. Maculation the methane terminated several years agency that it is replenished regularly, Mumma said.

The scientists get into't have it off for sure what is causing methane to be sick from Mars' rocky floor. But they have a distich ideas. It could be that the gas is trapped in ice-covered rocks. In the summer, the planet warms, and the ice melts. Then the gas could slip down of cracks in the rock. When winter rolls around again, the ice reforms and plugs up the leaks. That could explicate why there is more methane in the summer than in the winter.

In the other scenario, the methane is still trapped, merely this time it's locked inside footling molecular cages called clathrates. These are basically chunks of ice with lots of methane wrong. The summer sun unlocks the cages and frees the methane.

Neither of these hypotheses explains what creates the methane in the prototypical put back. That is still a little of a mystery. Near 90 percent of the methane in Land's atmosphere comes from livestock and rotting plants, but bacterium besides create the gas. It's possible that Mars' methane could represent coming from bacteria too. But it's too soon to enunciat. There is not enough show still to say unrivalled way or another, Chyba says. That will be the next challenge for Mumma and his team — finding out if living organisms on Mars acquire all that methane.

But one thing is for doomed: It's not coming from cows.

Share this post