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Remember the Discovery of Methane in the Martian Atmosphere? Now Scientists Can't Find Any Evidence

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

Phoenix666 writes:

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: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 22 2018, @09:04AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 22 2018, @09:04AM (#777471) Journal

    Or, maybe the Martians were careless with their environment, and kicked off global cooling, which did them in. Industrialization does stuff like that.

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