{"id":10004,"date":"2019-07-14T07:07:49","date_gmt":"2019-07-14T14:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=10004"},"modified":"2019-07-06T19:11:55","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T02:11:55","slug":"mysterious-mars-methane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2019\/07\/14\/mysterious-mars-methane\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious Mars Methane"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2019\/07\/methane-mars-mystery-curiosity-rover\/593149\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"from The Atlantic (opens in a new tab)\">from The Atlantic<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Startling Spike on Mars<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Methane gas is a potential indicator of life on the red planet, but it\u2019s proving difficult to track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/author\/marina-koren\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">MARINA KOREN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"480\" height=\"292\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZnK4NlLvFUA\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>If humans ever discover life on Mars, this is how it might start: with a breaking-news alert heralding a startling development well beyond Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On a recent Saturday afternoon,&nbsp;<em>The New York Times<\/em>&nbsp;sent a bulletin: \u201cMars is belching a large amount of methane gas. It\u2019s a sign of possible life on the red planet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>NASA quickly\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/news\/8452\/curiositys-mars-methane-mystery-continues\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">published<\/a>\u00a0a press release acknowledging the detection, which, the\u00a0<em>Times\u00a0<\/em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/06\/22\/science\/nasa-mars-rover-life.html\" target=\"_blank\">had reported<\/a>, marked the largest amount of methane ever registered by the Curiosity rover, a NASA mission that touched down on the red planet in 2012. But after that, the agency went quiet. The news had come from an email between scientists on the Curiosity team that had been leaked to the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>. It wasn\u2019t supposed to be known, at least not yet. And there\u2019s no room for nuance in a breaking-news alert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em>, NASA provided an important caveat: Many things can produce methane on Mars. Alien life is on that list, but other sources are far more likely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After decades of exploration, spacecraft haven\u2019t found any evidence of life on the surface of Mars. But some scientists say it may lurk beneath the surface, in the form of tiny organisms. And that\u2019s why methane is so noteworthy. On Earth, microbes pump the natural gas into the planet\u2019s atmosphere. Perhaps a similar arrangement exists on Mars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Methane doesn\u2019t last forever in the Martian atmosphere, however. Exposure to the sun\u2019s radiation, combined with reactions with other gases, breaks down the gas molecules within a few centuries. This chemistry is what makes the spike that Curiosity found so intriguing. If methane is present in the Martian atmosphere right now, it must have been released fairly recently. Detectable quantities might be a sign that something is alive on Mars, capable of replenishing the supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or not. Natural interactions between rock and water can also produce the gas. The methane might have been forged deep beneath the Martian surface\u2014where reservoirs of ancient water chafe against sediment\u2014escaping into the atmosphere through a narrow crack in the ground. The whiff Curiosity caught might have been billions of years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2019\/07\/methane-mars-mystery-curiosity-rover\/593149\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"click to continue reading at The Atlantic (opens in a new tab)\">click to continue reading at The Atlantic<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The Atlantic A Startling Spike on Mars Methane gas is a potential indicator of life on the red planet, but it\u2019s proving difficult to track. by MARINA KOREN If humans ever discover life on Mars, this is how it might start: with a breaking-news alert heralding a startling development well beyond Earth. On a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}