Yes, as I blogged merely a couple of weeks ago, the circumstantial evidence that there is life on Mars continues to mount up.
This week, NASA has admitted that they have evidence of Methane appearing over certain areas of Mars.
Methane only appears like this under two conditions,
"Plumes" of methane on Mars were identified during 2003; at one point in the study, the primary plume of methane contained an estimated 19,000 tonnes of the gas. That's a lot of potential microbes folks!
If the methane is produced by geological activity, it could either originate from active Martian volcanoes or from a process called serpentinisation. The latter process occurs at low temperatures and occurs when rocks rich in the minerals olivine and pyroxene react chemically with water, releasing methane.
If however its a biological feature (To put it bluntly, farting), then its going on either very near the surface, or deep below the permafrost layer. Microbes could have survived for aeon's below the Martian permafrost layer, where water changes from ice into liquid.
In the deep canyons, or the walls of yawning craters, ice might plug fissures or pores connecting these sub-permafrost regions to the atmosphere. But the ice could disappear during spring and summer and methane be released into the atmosphere.
Personally I believe that Mars had life in its watery past, and that remnants of this past survive as evolved microbes .... life is tenacious and will fill any available niche. I also strongly suspect that life exists elsewhere in our own Solar System.
In 1878 The Reverend William Dallinger ran a series of experiments to watch "Evolution in action" by studying the adaptation of such organisms to temperature.
He knew that temperatures of 65c would kill all microbes (via Pasteurisation), so he raised microbes in a water filled copper vessel and then over a long period of time he very slowly raised the temperature. Eventually he had a pot full of microbes which thrived in hot water ..... the experiments ended in 1886 when the sealed copper vessel got broken.
The work has been picked up by Dr Richard Lenski who has used E coli over a longish period and managed, through a cycle of feast and famine, to produce an *evolved version of E coli that has new properties and is, in effect, a different species of that microbe.
Evolution at work my friends, not GOD (aka The Intelligent Designer), just good old fashioned Darwinism.
*He of course had to then fend off an attack from the creationist crackpots, which he did via a talk, the transcript of which is on the first link, another couple of his articles are here and here.
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| Mars Methane .... |
This week, NASA has admitted that they have evidence of Methane appearing over certain areas of Mars.
Methane only appears like this under two conditions,
- The first is geochemistry.
- The second is biology.
"Plumes" of methane on Mars were identified during 2003; at one point in the study, the primary plume of methane contained an estimated 19,000 tonnes of the gas. That's a lot of potential microbes folks!
If the methane is produced by geological activity, it could either originate from active Martian volcanoes or from a process called serpentinisation. The latter process occurs at low temperatures and occurs when rocks rich in the minerals olivine and pyroxene react chemically with water, releasing methane.
If however its a biological feature (To put it bluntly, farting), then its going on either very near the surface, or deep below the permafrost layer. Microbes could have survived for aeon's below the Martian permafrost layer, where water changes from ice into liquid.
In the deep canyons, or the walls of yawning craters, ice might plug fissures or pores connecting these sub-permafrost regions to the atmosphere. But the ice could disappear during spring and summer and methane be released into the atmosphere.
Personally I believe that Mars had life in its watery past, and that remnants of this past survive as evolved microbes .... life is tenacious and will fill any available niche. I also strongly suspect that life exists elsewhere in our own Solar System.
In 1878 The Reverend William Dallinger ran a series of experiments to watch "Evolution in action" by studying the adaptation of such organisms to temperature.
He knew that temperatures of 65c would kill all microbes (via Pasteurisation), so he raised microbes in a water filled copper vessel and then over a long period of time he very slowly raised the temperature. Eventually he had a pot full of microbes which thrived in hot water ..... the experiments ended in 1886 when the sealed copper vessel got broken.
The work has been picked up by Dr Richard Lenski who has used E coli over a longish period and managed, through a cycle of feast and famine, to produce an *evolved version of E coli that has new properties and is, in effect, a different species of that microbe.
Evolution at work my friends, not GOD (aka The Intelligent Designer), just good old fashioned Darwinism.
*He of course had to then fend off an attack from the creationist crackpots, which he did via a talk, the transcript of which is on the first link, another couple of his articles are here and here.
Got to be something up there ... we are not alone!
ReplyDeleteMaybe when we finally make contact we can put aside God, Intelligent Designers, and other fanciful nonsense, and live in the real Universe .... surely theres enough wonder in that to satisfy anyone?
Oops sorry I didn't reply. Yes there is enough wonder in the universe for anyone.
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