Methane bugs love ice, so why not Mars?
Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery News
Wednesday, 7 December 2005
Greenland's ice is home to methane-producing microbes that are
surprising scientists with their survival strategies (Image: NASA)
Methane-making microbes inside Greenland ice could be telling us
there's life on Mars, say researchers.
Newfound microbes trapped in tiny liquid pores deep in glacial ice are
raising the possibility that the recently discovered mystery methane in
Mars' atmosphere is produced by similar microbes eking out a living in
the suspected ample ice buried under the planet's dry surface.
The report on the Greenland methanogens and calculations for Mars
appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences.
On Earth, methane is produced both by microbes and volcanic activity.
Once in the atmosphere it's rapidly destroyed by sunlight.
So, the abundance of methane in the Martian breezes, despite a lack of
known present-day volcanic activity, has many scientists wondering if
Martian microbes are behind it.
The case for microbial Martians is bolstered by their terrestrial
counterparts, which don't even require reproduction to survive for
eons, says physicist Professor Buford Price of the University of
California at Berkeley.
Could microbes live for thousands of years?
Price and his students have found indirect evidence that individual
methane-making microbes he and his students have discovered in
Greenland ice could be up to 100,000 years old.
"We can't prove it, but in my opinion that's what's happening," says
Price. The idea of an immortal microbe seems far-fetched, but
independent ice biologists say it's perfectly possible.
"The fact of the matter is, most microbes in nature are not growing,"
says ice biologist and Assistant Research Professor Brent Christner of
Montana State University in Bozeman.
New calculations show that microbes could produce enough methane on
Mars to account for what scientists have recently detected there
(Image: Science/NASA)
Instead, they are often scratching by in the most Spartan way, doing no
other work than keeping their DNA in order.
"It's basically a survival strategy," he says.
Part of what makes Price suspect his Greenland methanogens are
microbial Methuselahs is that they have no room to grow in their tiny
liquid bubbles, almost no nutrients to live on and there are no
byproducts of any previous generations piled up around them.
And although Price hasn't yet directly tied his microbes to methane gas
found in the ice, he's calculated how much methane they might be
producing under similar circumstances on Mars.
Price figures that the current amounts of methane observed in Mars'
atmosphere could be entirely microbe-made if there is an average of one
methanogen per cubic metre spread 10 metres thick over the planet.
Of course, the ice would have to be nearer to freezing than the frigid
Martian surface temperatures for microscopic liquid crevices to form
and support the methanogens, but that simply requires that the icy
layer be buried deep enough to be warmed by the planet's internal heat.
In fact, says Christner, that's exactly what's warming the deep ice in
Greenland. Near the bottom of the glaciers it's a cosy -5=B0C, compared
with the surface, where it can drop to -50=B0C, he says.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Methane bugs love ice, so why not Mars? |
23 Dec 2005 04:02:05 PM |
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Foaming at the Mouth Psychotic wrote:
Methane bugs love ice, so why not Mars?
Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery News
Wednesday, 7 December 2005
That Mars thing is a Huge distraction, they simply cannot afford it,
and it is highly unlikely to ever be able to support human life,
Antarctica should tell you that, it is not even as cold as Mars and has
an atmosphere, and just how developed is it?
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