

NASA rover yet to find methane on Mars - ananyob
http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-rover-finds-no-methane-on-mars-yet-1.11730

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chucknelson
I think this post title should be changed - why is the "yet" left off when
it's clearly in the article title?

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doctorpangloss
Cassini/Huygens, Voyager, and soon New Horizons captivate the public without
conducting life science. Are our Martian missions discredited if they find no
evidence of life? I really hope not, and I hope the public understands so too.

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manaskarekar
They're also about evaluating the viability of human life on Mars.

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zerostar07
Are there any organisms that could survive in the current martian landscape so
as to slowly enrich its atmosphere?

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arethuza
Apparently some alpine and polar lichens could survive on mars:

[http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151...](http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-3409/)

However, my understanding is that these have such slow rates of growth that
they might not be terribly good at "enriching" the Martian atmosphere, at
least in their current natural form.

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lywald
Putting viable life on Mars would be such an important threshold. It would
guarantee life to survive even the destruction of Earth. Important stuff. Like
Raid1 for data redundancy.

Not many things could destroy both Earth and Mars, except the expanding of the
Sun in 5 billion years and maybe the fusion Andromeda/MilkyWay in 4 billion
years if we're not lucky. Also aliens.

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zerostar07
Isn't that dangerous though? Could altering its atmosphere have a
destabilizing effect? What if they evolve too fast and turn against us?

Edit: interesting to read: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars>

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freehunter
I think the dangerous part would be altering the planet to be unlivable to the
current inhabitants. Which is a good reason for conducting these tests, to see
if anything is there before we start transplanting life. If nothing is there,
then we can move lichens etc without fear of contamination. If something is
there, we don't want to destroy its habitat by introducing new life.

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Sapient
Ive just realised how good AND bad finding life on Mars could be. On the one
hand, we find LIFE on another planet. On the other hand, it makes it
incredibly difficult for humans to ever move there and begin terraforming the
planet into a second home.

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zerostar07
If history is any guide, native inhabitants don't stand a chance if we can
kill them.

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cperciva
_... the 95% upper and lower confidence limits of the non-detection varied
between -2 and 5 parts per billion_

I can't imagine the degree of confusion which led someone to say that it's
possible for Mars' atmosphere to contain a _negative_ concentration of
methane.

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zitterbewegung
Statistically your confidence interval can go negative but practically a
negative concentration doesn't exist.

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cperciva
_Statistically your confidence interval can go negative_

No, it really can't. If it looks like it is, you're using a symmetric
distribution function (probably a normal distribution) in a context where its
assumptions do not hold.

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zerostar07
I think they said variation, not confidence interval

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manaskarekar
Wow, that's a presumptuous claim given the sample size of the tests.

I mean we're talking about a whole planet here, with the possibility of
canyons, valleys, underground structures which may have who knows what trapped
inside them.

Maybe there are tons of gases trapped and hidden inside the surface of Mars
and the atmosphere is devoid of it because over millions of years, those
things escaped into space?

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jerf
And I find your dismissal presumptuous, based as it is on an article for the
popular press. I am thinking that the people who dedicate their lives to
studying planets may have at some point had the "Gosh, planets are _big_ "
thought cross their mind at some point.

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JoeAltmaier
...they didn't write the article.

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rpm4321
Didn't a NASA satellite already detect methane in the Martian atmosphere a few
years ago?

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rpm4321
Here's some links: [http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/mars-
methane-c...](http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/mars-methane-
changes-seasons-and-scientists-wonder-why) [http://www.popsci.com/military-
aviation-amp-space/article/20...](http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-
space/article/2009-01/methane-may-point-life-mars)

I know I'm probably missing something here.

UPDATE: Okay, here we go: _Various campaigns in the last decade have claimed
to detect martian methane at levels as intriguingly high as 30 parts per
billion1 and 45 parts per billion2. But more perplexing was the way that the
methane signals sometimes appeared as hotspots, or plumes, and then
disappeared — implying both a sudden injecton, as well as an unknown process
to destroy the methane quickly, which would otherwise mix in the atmosphere
and persist. Skepticism for these claims has abounded (See “Curiosity set to
weigh in on Mars methane puzzle” )._

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RyanMcGreal
"yet"

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zerostar07
Suppose they find it and it's some weird bacteria-like structures. It's a big
deal, but what impact could it have for science and tech? I believe it would
have similar impact to the (false) announcement of these bacteria that
replaced P with As. Remarkable, but not sure what we would do with it.

