TOKYO: NASA has confirmed the presence of methane on the surface of Mars that shows life once existed on the planet. The tunable laser spectrometer in the SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) instrument of the Curiosity robot found episodic increase in the concentration of methane in the environment of Mars.
This puts an end to the long controversy on the presence of methane in Mars, which started over a decade ago when this gas was first detected with telescopes from the Earth.
Since methane can be the product of biological activity – practically all the existing methane in the Earth’s atmosphere originates in this way – this has created great expectations that Martian methane could also be of a similar origin.
“It is a finding that puts paid to the question of the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere but it does pose some other more complex and far-reaching questions, such as the nature of its sources,” said study co-author Francisco Javier Martin-Torres from the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences (CSIC-UGR) at the University of Granada, Spain.
“The sources, we believe, must lie in one or two additional sources that were not originally contemplated in the models used so far. Among these sources, we must not rule out biological methanogenesis,” he added.
According to some current models, if there really existed methane in Mars, it would remain there for an average 300 years and during this period, it would be homogeneously distributed across the atmosphere.
Astronomers discover distant dwarf planet beyond Neptune
LONDON: A dwarf planet half the size of Britain has been found tumbling through space in the most distant reaches...
