Life on Mars - Still a Possibility

"As Sherlock Holmes said, eliminate all other factors and the one that remains must be the truth. The list of possible sources of methane gas is getting smaller and excitingly, extraterrestrial life still remains an option. Ultimately the final test may have to be on Mars."

Mark Sephton, Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London

Scientists have ruled out the possibility that methane is delivered to Mars by meteorites, raising fresh hopes that the gas might be generated by life on the red planet, in research published tomorrow (Wednesday 9 December 2009) in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Methane has a short lifetime of just a few hundred years on Mars because it is constantly being depleted by a chemical reaction in the planet's atmosphere, caused by sunlight. Scientists analysing data from telescopic observations and unmanned space missions have discovered that methane on Mars is being constantly replenished by an unknown source and they are keen to uncover how the levels of methane are being topped up.

Researchers had thought that meteorites might be responsible for Martian methane levels because when the rocks enter the planet's atmosphere they are subjected to intense heat, causing a chemical reaction that releases methane and other gases into the atmosphere.

However, the new study, by researchers from Imperial College London, shows that the volumes of methane that could be released by the meteorites entering Mars's atmosphere are too low to maintain the current atmospheric levels of methane. Previous studies have also ruled out the possibility that the methane is delivered through volcanic activity.

This leaves only two plausible theories to explain the gas's presence, according to the researchers behind today's findings. Either there are microorganisms living in the Martian soil that are producing methane gas as a by-product of their metabolic processes, or methane is being produced as a by-product of reactions between volcanic rock and water. Evidence of past water makes Mars a prime candidate for life. And, Mars retains enough internal heat that liquid water may be possible underground, in which case, life might still survive there.

The team say their study will help NASA and ESA scientists who are planning a joint mission to the red planet in 2018 to search for the source of methane. The researchers say now that they have discovered that meteorites are not a source of Methane on Mars, ESA and NASA scientists can focus their attention on the two last remaining options.

The team used a technique called Quantitive Pyrolysis-Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy to reproduce the same searing conditions experienced by meteorites as they enter the Martian atmosphere. The team heated the meteorite fragments to 1000 degrees Celsius and measured the gases that were released using an infrared beam.

When quantities of gas released by the laboratory experiments were combined with published calculations of meteorite in-fall rates on Mars, the scientists calculated that only 10 kilograms of meteorite methane was produced each year, far below the 100 to 300 tons required to replenish methane levels in the Martian atmosphere

Casey Kazan

Source: Imperial College of London

Comments

[Gavrilo]

And what about the third possibility, which would be Thomas Gold's theory of the deep reserves of hydrocarbons in the soil of the earth - and why not Mars?

Hydrocarbons are present in large amounts in the solar system ; in the atmosphere of giant planets, on Titan, even in Halley's comet. Gold presents strong evidence that the hydrocarbons on Earth are part of the primordial soup that built the planet, and are not "fossil fuels".

Should that be the case, one could safely assume that a similar formation gave birth to Mars. The methane would therefore be leaking out of the depths of the planet.

I'd love to find out that life exists on Mars, but I think in this case an alternative explanation for the methane has been overlooked.

[Andrew T]

@Gavrilo: you are referring, I presume, to Gold's theory of abiogenic petroleum origin? Um yeah, the reason that's not being considered is because geologists do not take that theory seriously. To its credit, this theory does make some testable predictions, as any good scientific theory should. Those predictions, however, have all come up lacking in evidence.

From the Wikipedia entry: "Abiogenic petroleum origin is an alternative hypothesis to the prevailing theory of biological petroleum origin. Most popular in the Soviet Union between the 1950s and 1980s, the abiogenic hypothesis has little support among contemporary petroleum geologists, who argue that abiogenic petroleum does not exist in significant amounts and that there is no indication that an application of the hypothesis is or has ever been of commercial value." See in particular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin#The_geological_argument_against

[Dredd]

@Andrew T,

Well said.

That theory was to try to offset the studies of H.K. Hubbert who in 1956 predicted the peak oil of the U.S., which happened to confirm his theory and the famous Hubbert curve.

The oil barons wanted to pull the wool over the public's eyes, the governments complied, and so we now find ourselves in danger.

The addiction to oil and therefore the addiction to damaging the earth is the result of that deceit which is still strong today.

Survivors of the Martian catastrophes, in the form of microbial life, is the more likely source of this methane on Mars.

[Gavrilo]

That's all well... but why then would basically all the bodies of the solar system be very rich in hydrocarbons - all of them abiogenic, while only the earth would be deprived of them, and would have had to generate them later on?

Also, on what source of energy would have fed the primordial life forms, if the earth was devoid of any source of chemical energy?

I could ask a thousand more questions to which the biogenic petroleum theory is unable to answer.

[Josiah Rosenthal]

Surely there's no "fossil fuel" as pointed by Dr. Thomas Gold in his book The Deep Hot Biosphere". It's important to note that hydrocarbons are primordial materials. Carbon has huge cosmic abundance, that's the fourth element after Hydrogen, Helium and Oxygen. Methane is common in solar system bodies such as Titan, a saturn moon, verified by Cassini-Huygens Mission. The Inner planets of solar system as earth and mars could be retained hydrocarbons, mainly methane, and also helium, nitrogen and other primordial gases during its process of accretionary formation. These hydrocarbons and natural gases are still upwelling. Of course hydrocarbons are food for microbial life. Indeed there is a possibility this kind of life may exist in mars and other planets but methane is primordial and life came after hydrocarbon compounds and it is impossible that biological molecules form petroleum because violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics.
In summary it's important keep in mind as said Sir Fred Hoyle:
"The suggestion that petroleum might have arisen from some transformation of squashed fish or biological detritus is surely the silliest notion to have been entertained by substantial numbers of persons over an extended period of time." Fred Hoyle, 1982.

[Gavrilo]

Thanks Josiah, it's good to read something like this, and not the usual:

"The petroleum must be biogenic because very smart people said so, and because the same people said the other theory is false"

[Weise Ente]

No, abotic oil is bunk for many, many reasons.
Chief among them is simply that it doesn't work. Oil companies use the biotic theory of oil to find deposits.
Not to mention the isotope ratio of fossil fuels indicates a biotic origin.

No one takes the idea seriously.

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