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  2. Is There Life on Mars?

Is There Life on Mars?

By catdynamics on August 4, 2008.

No says NASA.
Not yet.

(h/t NASAwatch)

NASA is surreptitiously downplaying blog buzz that the Phoenix lander has found something very interesting...

In particular it is absolutely definitely not life!
As we know it.

But, there is a lot of heat and smoke and hints of an upcoming paper in Science or something.
I know nothing. So, I will feel free to wildly speculate in the hope someone who does know will correct me, because that is how the web works, as you know:

I am guessing, that the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer found something juicy in the sample that had the water ice that they managed to get in the oven.
Presumably something vaguely describable as organic - maybe something as simple as methane - remember in the highly oxidized soil and atmosphere, such stuff should not persist.
It would be even more interesting if they found carbon containing compounds that were either more complex than methane, or that showed carbon isotope abundance anomalies consistent with biogenesis, as we see it on Earth.

This would of course be wildly irresponsible speculation and we should all just shut up and wait for the refereed paper to leakcome out.

Coincidentally Phoenix's mission has been extended through September.
Get some more of those juice ice sample in there!

Tags
astro

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The buzz seems to be around the MECA wet chem lab - as I recall, they took a second sample a few weeks ago (the first one was the the one with the peas and asparagus) and have said nothing about it since.

My wild-arsed guess would be chemical evidence for liquid water (which might just mean a highly saline film a few molecules thick around micron sized dust particles).

More interesting would be a reducing ion like Fe2+ which would imply an energy gradient - either something life could exploit or that might be regarded as something that ought not to exist (like the methane you mention) and might mean there is life.

The existence of methane should be no surprise since much of the solar system objects consist heavily of methane. I believe the discovery of methane on Mars would lend support to Thomas Gold's theory that natural gas (methane) on Earth is of abiogenic origin as it would the notion that there is life on Mars.

There has been tentative spectroscopic evidence for methane being emitted from the Martian crust for a few years now.
Needs in situ confirmation.
Consistent with being emitted from particular locales.
Could be biogenic, or trapped, or abiotically synthesised in situ.