Exciting news for people still hoping that there’s some kind of life on Mars comes from a study of the rate of methane-bearing meteorites falling onto Mars. Measurements of methane on Mars have indicated that the gas is being constantly replaced by some unknown source on the red planet. Methane degrades after a few hundred years, so there wouldn’t be any methane at all in the Martian atmosphere if some methane production wasn’t taking place.
One proposed source for the methane was meteorites, which can release methane when they heat up, falling through the atmosphere. Scientists Richard Court and Mark Sephton, in a new article in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, find that the amount of methane released into the atmosphere of Mars through this method isn’t enough to account for the present levels of methane there.
That leaves two possibilities:
1. Geological reactions involving water
2. Life on Mars, burping
“Our data support attempts to search for life and explore subsurface chemical processes on the Red Planet,” write Court and Sephton.
“One proposed source for the methane was meteorites, which can release meteorites when they heat up…” Should that be “which can release methane when they heat up”?
Dear me, you’re right – my typing hands issue random M-based words when they heat up.