Everyone has been dying to know whether our closest planetary neighbor in the solar system, Mars, has ever been inhabited or could someday be. Although key chemical elements needed life have been found, no evidence seems to give us a concrete answer. However, we might be getting closer to the truth!
Previous data indicated positive detections of methane. However, NASA's Curiosity rover has recently analyzed atmospheric samples six times, by it's Tunable Laser Spectrometer, and has not been detecting methane.
So what does this mean?
Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor says "Methane is persistent. It would last for hundreds of years in the Martian atmosphere.” This leads us to believe that if at once there was life on Mars, it was far too long ago.
Curiosity has provided us with evidence of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon on Mars, along with evidence of an ancient river system. But now appears to lackmethane. Thus, we can conclude that perhaps there is no life as of now but, has this always been the case?
Michael Meyer, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration, reminds us that not all terrestrial microbes are methane-producing. We remain with no clear answer to the "life on Mars" question but everyday we find out something new about our beloved Mars. By: Maria Blancas, Konstantinos Kaliptsoglou, and Adam Tuchinsky
No comments:
Post a Comment