Has the Mars Rover Sniffed Methane? 119
First time accepted submitter GrimAndBearIt writes "NASA's Curiosity rover is poised to settle years of debate on the question of atmospheric methane on Mars, which would be a sign of microbial life. With parts per trillion sensitivity, it's not so much a question of whether the rover will be able to smell trace amounts of methane, but rather a question of how much. NASA has announced that Grotzinger's team will discuss atmospheric measurements at a briefing on 2 November. If the rover has detected methane at sufficiently high concentration, or exhibiting temporal variations of the kind that suggests microbial activity, then it will surely motivate a desire to identify and map the sources."
Wow how sad (Score:5, Insightful)
8 posts so far, 8 fart jokes. I see space exploration is truly inspiring to Slashdot geeks...
Perhaps what we need is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
More limited than a rover, but much less expensive, and a lot less that could go wrong.... with a lot larger coverage area.
Re:Wow how sad (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if not funny by themselves, these jokes at least be somewhat creative, and some even may be called elegant (not my examples, of course). And yet we get something on a level of a dumb teenager. Hmm... maybe it's a deep social or political satire in there? Like "look, candidates, with that level of funding all that NASA can attract is a bunch of stupid fart jokes lovers"?
Re:Wow how sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's because the article title uses the word "Sniffed" rather than, for example, "Detected".
Re:Even if there is temporal variation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if there is temporal variation, why are they so certain that the methane in the air is due biological activities?
They are not, in fact scientists have been really busy trying to come up with alternate explanations for the presence of methane on Mars. However, the indications that the methane may be due to life are strong enough to make this worth investigating even though the odds are probably rather slim.
Re:First (Score:4, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity (no pun intended), wouldn't it be fairly easy to identify false positives? For example, if the concentration of methane appears to increase the longer the rover is stationary the more likely it is that it's coming from the rover rather than the atmosphere, assuming no wind anyway. And if there was wind any methane produced by the rover would be carried away and become a non-issue as well, right?