Mars a Red Planet or a Blue Planet?
How "legitimate" a science journal is Icarus? I'll have to remain skeptical of these claims for now.
Hm. Alas, I think there's a serious failure of imagination at work here. I can think of another possibility, and it's stunning that Our Good Doctor did not bother to consider it.
How about carbonaceous meteors crashing into Mars? They'd probably survive to hit the surface and disperse the gas.
Our dear professor is too focused on finding life to consider reasonable alternatives.
>>So the next step in the search for Martian life is to isolate the source or sources of the methane.<<
Look for cattle!
A team led by Vladimir Krasnopolsky of Catholic University has analyzed the existence of methane in the Martian atmosphere and found strong evidence bacterial action is the only plausible source of the gas. The planet's fabled little green men might be little green algae, alive somewhere under the surface - today. I think it's a product of metabolism of methanogenic bacteria on Mars, Krasnopolsky, an atmospheric scientist, told United Press International. They catalyze carbon dioxide and hydrogen to form methane and water... The methane must be coming from bacterial action, Krasnopolsky said. We're pretty confident, he added.RW, I'll scare up some additional 'fo.
George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent
Life on Other Planets
(by the late) Thomas Gold
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/Life.html
for your viewing pleasure.
Scientists in the US have witnessed the production of methane under the conditions that exist in the Earth's upper mantle for the first time. The experiments demonstrate that hydrocarbons could be formed inside the Earth via simple inorganic reactions -- and not just from the decomposition of living organisms as conventionally assumed -- and might therefore be more plentiful than previously thought.
he estimates there could be about 20 tons of methanogenic bacteria currently living on Mars
I'll bet there's more than that in john Kerry's mouth.
another discontinuity (sort of) worthy of Star Trek: Voyager.
Mars Life Looms Closer ^
Posted by SunkenCiv
On News/Activism ^ 09/23/2004 10:54:57 PM PDT · 30 of 29 ^