California, Gatra.com- A group of scientists may have just pinpointed the location on Mars of a mysterious source of methane, the gas most commonly produced by microbes. NASA’s Curiosity rover may be right above it. Methane was probably produced recently. Live Science, 16/7.
Traces of methane have been detected by Curiosity’s detection system six times since the rover landed in Mars’ Gale crater in 2012. But scientists have been unable to find its source. Now, with a new analysis, researchers may have traced the methane burp to its origin.
To quantify the unknown source of methane, researchers at California Institute of Technology modeling methane particles by dividing them into separate packages. Taking into account wind speed and direction at the time of their detection, the team tracked the methane packets over time to possible emission points. By doing this for all of the different detection spikes, they were able to calculate the area where the methane source was most likely to be – one just a few dozen miles away from the rover.
“[Temuan] points to an active emission region to the west and southwest of the Curiosity rover on the floor of the northwestern crater,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “It may be a coincidence that we chose a landing site for Curiosity that lies next to an active methane emission site.”
The prospect is exciting for scientists, because nearly all of the methane in Earth’s atmosphere has a biological origin, the researchers say, and this sign on Mars could be the key to life on the ostensibly deserted planet. Even if methane was produced by non-biological processes, it could indicate geological activity closely linked to the presence of liquid water — an essential ingredient for past or present life to thrive.
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