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posted by martyb on Saturday December 22 2018, @02:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-farts-given? dept.

Phys.org:

In 2003, scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Center made the first-ever detection of trace amounts of methane in Mars' atmosphere, a find which was confirmed a year later by the ESA's Mars Express orbiter. In December of 2014, the Curiosity rover detected a tenfold spike of methane at the base of the Gale Crater, and uncovered evidence that indicated that Mars has a seasonal methane cycle, where levels peak in the late northern summer.

The existence of methane gas on Mars has been long been held to be potential evidence for the existence of past or present life. So it was quite the downer last week (on Dec. 12th) when the science team behind one of the ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spectrometers announced that they had found no traces of methane in Mars' atmosphere.

Maybe the Martians are hiding.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 22 2018, @04:31AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 22 2018, @04:31AM (#777438) Journal

    However one of the papers I read seemed to indicate that the expected half-life of methane due to photochemical destruction was about 350 years but the measured half-lives were between 0.6 and 4 earth years.

    With reactive perchlorates sitting out on the surface, it's not going to be photochemistry that nails methane.