Wednesday, December 17, 2014

The mystery of Martian methane – The Economist

The gas appears to come from a source close to Gale crater; according to the observations, methane disperses quickly once that expels unknown source.

Findings Curiosity. Photo: Nasa

New Curiosity probe results suggest two phenomena: the presence of methane in the Martian atmosphere is lower than that suggested previous studies, but that the gas has periodic increases.

This means that the Martian methane on Earth comes almost entirely of organic matter (ie living things), is produced by a close but unknown.

source The scientists, led by researcher Christopher Webster, try to resolve contradictions between the readings made by Curiosity and previous studies conducted in the atmosphere of Mars, for it working with data collected over 20 months for Curiosity in Gale Crater, near the original point where the probe landed.

The data demonstrate that stable levels of methane on Mars, product of organic matter He dropped by meteorites to the surface of the planet and other phenomena, is less than half than expected. The surprise was that subsequent measurements the amount of methane has periodic peaks up to 10 times the usual amount

The gas appears to come from a source close to Gale crater.; according to the observations, methane disperses quickly once that expels unknown source.

In an alternate study by researchers at the call was Hesperian 3,000 years ago, when the planet was much more hot and humid, shows that the proportion of hydrogen and deuterium (heavy hydrogen escapes less easily) was then nearly three times that of Earth’s ocean.

The mystery now is to discover how and why the planet lost its moisture.

LikeTweet

No comments:

Post a Comment