NASA has announced yesterday the discovery of methane in the Martian atmosphere, and that has become huge news quite rapidly; I've even seen it mentioned on TV earlier today.
Why is that an important discovery? Well, methane is a very fragile substance; not only UV rays destroy it quickly (by breaking the atomic bonds), but so do exposure to oxygen or hydrogen peroxide. Mars lacks an ozone layer, so UV rays are very abundant there, and oxygen and hydrogen peroxide are not that hard to find either. Taking all that into account, the fact that there is any methane at all in the atmosphere means that it is being created and released by some process.
On Earth, most processes that release methane are biological. Bacteria release large amounts of it while processing organic matter, and so does cattle (technically, the bacteria in their guts). We know there is no cattle in Mars, but we can't rule out underground bacteria.
There are geological processes that can release methane as well; however, it is (was?) thought that Mars is pretty much dead, geologically speaking. So, this discovery means that either there are some previously unknown geological processes going own in the red planet, or there are biological processes. Both possibilities are very exciting, but it will take a while before this can be settled.
Mars keeps surprising us, and I don't think it will stop any time soon!
Leave a comment