If only we could harness the Martian methane belch…

There was a surprising and mysterious belch of methane gas on Mars NASA says. NASA thinks there might be microbial life underground, but admitted the gas could come from changes in rocks. Methane gas on earth is by far mostly a byproduct of life — animal digestion and decaying plants and animals.

This is the first study to find regular methane on Mars. Some 21,000 tons of methane were released during a few months in late summer of 2003. Hmm…I wonder, could we run a pipe from Mars to Earth? Nah. Doesn’t seem likely, does it?

“This raises the probability substantially that life was there or still survives at the present,” says the study author at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

By 2006, most of the methane had disappeared…adding to the mystery of the gas.

A similar phenomenon to the Mars belch happens in the waters near Santa Barbara, Calif. There the gas comes from decaying life in the sea floor. Even microbes in the Arctic and other extreme Earth environments release methane even they don’t use O2.

Methane is not only a waste product of life, it is also food for other life. NASA doesn’t know where the methane came from but they’d sure like to have it appear again. What do you think about the possibility of life in space?

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Planetary geologists are guessing that valleys on Mars came from gushes of water resulting from past rainfall or groundwater springs. Theorize, believe, speculate … they all have the same meaning when it comes right down to it. Scientists so much want to believe that life, as we know it, existed elsewhere that they will jump to any conclusion.

And jump they do I think.

They have no evidence. They only believe. What’s the difference between believing conditions existed for life as we know it despite having no concrete evidence and believing, say that the universe, as we know it, is the product of some all powerful designer? Both are guesses, no?

I hope we never need to find another home far away from the home where we live now. I don’t anticipate that happening in my lifetime either. But, if we don’t become better stewards of this planet with which we have been entrusted, we may be doing more than wishing life could be sustained on Mars, we may be desperately hoping it can.

What do you think?

source

The Phoenix Mars Mission is a true partnership between the government, academia and the industry that was designed to study the history of water and the habitabillity potential on the Martian arctic’s ice-rich soil.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TaP8YMM524[/youtube]

If everything goes as planned, on Sunday – May 25th, the Phoenix space craft is going to land on Mars. It will enter the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph and after finishing a set of events it should land on three “feet” at 5mph. Let’s hope everything will go smoothly and we’ll be able to find out more about the red planet.

If you want to be informed, this is NASA’s landing blog.

via Courier-Journal