On Mars, something is constantly happening, but scientists are silent. Mars - latest news, photos, videos Mars: a catastrophe that was not noticed

Last week, astrobiologists looking for life in space were delighted: there is methane gas on Mars. It was discovered by the rover "" - a robot exploring the surface of the Red Planet. On Earth, this gas is produced mainly by living things, and after entering the atmosphere, it decays very quickly. It turns out that if there is methane on Mars, it got there recently. Does this mean that living beings are on Mars too? How do they generally look for life on another planet?

How are they looking for life on Mars?

Life is everywhere on Earth. You see butterflies and people, animal footprints and bird droppings, even plants are also life. Because our planet has sustained life for billions of years and has had time to expand into land, water and air. But how do you find life on a planet that has no traces of it? There is no water on Mars, no trees, no air, and there is no flight to Mars. People have not been to Mars yet.

That is why scientists are trying to cling to traces of life or its remains: they are looking for any fossils, traces of bones, gases (after all, you produce gas, don't you) or possible bodies of water that have not yet dried up or frozen - it is very cold on Mars. But life could exist in the cold. Special robots are used to search for traces of it. For example, Curiosity:

What does the Curiosity rover look like?

In 2012, scientists officially announced that there was no methane. Hopes of finding life on the Red Planet have diminished greatly. And now, just last week, the Curiosity rover "smelled" methane in the air - very little, much less than can be found in the air on our planet - 21 molecules per billion. And very quickly, this "high concentration" dropped to 1 molecule per billion.

“The plume came and the plume went away,” commented Paul Mahaffy, a NASA scientist.

But now it became clear that seasonal "bursts" of methane occur on Mars. Are they connected with life? Unknown. Unfortunately, the Curiosity rover has no instruments that can tell you exactly what the origin of this methane is. It is important to understand who produces it: something alive or not. New missions to the Red Planet will make it possible to find out, but they need to be designed and landed exactly on the target, where there will be life with the maximum probability.

“The discovery of methane and organics on Mars is of immense importance for the search for traces of life. Curiosity has already shown that the lake that covered the bottom of Gale Crater 3.5 billion years ago was potentially habitable. Given the presence of organics at its bottom, now the question of the existence of Martian life is has become even more relevant, "- comments on the discovery of Inge Kate, planetary scientist from the University of Utrecht (Netherlands).

The methane riddle of Mars

In recent years, geologists, astrobiologists and other specialists have been actively arguing about whether there are reserves of organic matter or microbes in the near-surface layers of the soil of Mars, where there is liquid water, where cosmic rays hardly penetrate and where it is relatively warm.

When the Curiosity rover first sniffed and analyzed the air composition and soil content of Mars in 2012 and 2013, scientists were unable to find traces of methane in them. However, just a few months later, the rover's sensors recorded several bursts in the concentration of methane at once.

For the first time, the Curiosity scientific team decided to announce this discovery in December 2014 and presented their findings in the journal Science in January 2015. This statement immediately drew a lot of criticism from a number of other planetary scientists. They considered methane a byproduct of the rover itself, the result of a leak of one of the reagents from its SAM laboratory, or traces of some "non-living" processes in the soil of Mars.

Ashwin Vasavada, head of the Curiosity rover's science team, and his colleagues gave a comprehensive answer to all critics, presenting the results of six years of observations of the concentration of methane in the atmosphere of Mars and making an amazing discovery in a place named Mojave three years ago.

For six years of "life" on Mars, as scientists note, the rover saw two Martian winters, autumn, spring and summer. This allowed Wasawada and his team to accurately measure seasonal variations in atmospheric methane using the TLS instrument and to refine past measurements.

Now planetary scientists are fully confident that the concentration of methane in the atmosphere of Mars increases during the summer and falls during the winter, reaching concentrations of 2.5 and 6.5 parts per ten billion. The threefold increase in the proportion of methane in the summer air of Mars, as geologists emphasize, cannot be explained by atmospheric processes or by the fact that solar ultraviolet light better decomposes organic debris of asteroids falling on the Red Planet.

All this suggests that methane is formed in the lower soil layers of Mars either as a result of the activity of microbes, or as a result of the decomposition of clathrates, compounds of methane and water, or due to some kind of geothermal processes.

As the sharp surges in the "local" concentration of methane, exceeding typical values ​​by tens of times, show, this gas accumulates inside peculiar micro-caves and reservoirs in the soil and periodically breaks out.

"Pantry of life" on Mars

In November 2012, John Grotzinger, the former head of the Curiosity rover's science team, announced an "epoch-making discovery" on Mars that he said should have made it to the pages of textbooks. Two weeks later, when this statement had already become overgrown with the most fantastic rumors, NASA planetary scientists talked about the discovery of perchlorates - primitive organic molecules - in the soil of Mars.

This discovery immediately dashed all hopes for the discovery of the first traces of extraterrestrial life, since such molecules can be formed in the soil as a result of "inanimate" chemical reactions and the interaction of other forms of organic matter with ultraviolet light and cosmic rays.

The perchlorate fiasco, Grotzinger and his colleagues write, was fully justified in January 2015 when Curiosity reached the foot of Mount Sharp, the central peak at the bottom of Gale Crater, and began studying the chemistry of the rocks and rocks of one of the local highlands, named the Mojave.

Scientists' attention was drawn to the strange "striped" deposits of clay and other rocks that formed at the bottom of an ancient Martian lake about 3.5 billion years ago. When the rover drilled them and studied their composition, the geologists were in for a surprise - they contained a huge number of complex organic molecules.

The Curiosity mass spectrometer is quite modest in its capabilities, but even they were enough to detect traces of thiophene, sulfur and butyrene compounds, methaneethiol, sulfur and methane, benzothiophene, as well as a large number of simple hydrocarbons, their aromatic "cousins" and a number of others molecules.

As Grottzinger and his colleagues point out, all of these molecules were most likely part of a more complex organic matter. Due to solvent leakage, scientists had to carry out all experiments inside SAM only at high temperatures, 600-800 degrees Celsius, which should have destroyed all large molecules and split them into many small "tails".

Roughly the same molecules were found near the Mojave, in Confidence Hills, where the rover stopped a month later. Their presence, scientists conclude, does not necessarily indicate that life existed on Mars 3.5 million years ago. It indicates that in the waters of the Martian lakes, reactions could occur that gave rise to such complex organic matter, and the sources of food for potential life were more diverse than previously thought.

Interestingly, the neighboring regions of the bottom of Gale Crater, where Curiosity first found traces of the lake's existence, do not contain such reserves of organic matter, despite their older age. Scientists believe that this is due to the fact that they were naked a long time ago in comparison with the Mojave and Confidence Hills, and all organic matter had time to disappear from them.

“Regardless of how this organic matter originated, its presence suggests that traces of life may be present on the surface of Mars, despite the radiation and a large number of oxidants in its atmosphere. several thousand years ago, "the scientists conclude.

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On this life-affirming note, we say goodbye, thank you for being with us, pleasant Martian dreams!

Scientists all over the world have already responded to the discovery. According to Kirsten Sibach of Rice University in Houston, the discovery will violate the arguments of many skeptics of the theory of an inhabited Mars. “The big takeaway from all of this is that we can find evidence. We can find organic material that has been stored in clay for over 3 billion years. And we see the release of gases that may be associated with subsurface life, or at least associated with the warm, humid conditions in which life on Earth thrives successfully, ”she said.

The main idea that was conveyed to NASA is that it is not yet life, but we got very close to it. “With these new discoveries, Mars is telling us to keep looking for signs of life. I am confident that our ongoing and future missions prepare even more exciting discoveries on the Red Planet, ”said Thomas Zurbuchen, Head of NASA Science Programs.

NASA's press conference ended, scientists managed to answer a number of questions from journalists. One of them concerned the possibility of using methane in the atmosphere as a fuel in future expeditions to Mars. The answer, of course, is yes!

The discovery of methane on Mars is not new in itself. In small concentrations, it was recorded there before. The current discovery is that for the first time a seasonal cyclicity in its concentration has been discovered. “This is the first time we see something repeating in the methane situation, which gives us an opportunity to understand. This became possible thanks to the long work of the rover. Long work allowed us to see a picture of seasonal "breathing" - explained Chris Webster.

Scientists speculate that methane may be contained in the subsurface layer of Mars, in water-containing crystals called clathrates. Changes in temperature during the seasons are thought to cause the gas to escape and change in concentration.

The concentration of methane in the northern hemisphere reaches its peak at the end of the Martian summer and is 2.7 times higher than the minimum values.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

With regard to methane in the atmosphere, Christopher Webster does not rule out that currently living microbes are a possible source of the gas. “With this new information, we cannot rule out microbial activity as a possible source,” he said.

“The discovery of organics adds to the history of the planet's habitability. This tells us that these ancient conditions could have sustained life. Everything needed to sustain life was there. But that doesn't tell us that life was there. "

These molecules can be the building blocks of life, but they can also have other origins. Scientists cannot yet say whether their origin is associated with processes in living nature. “There could be three possible sources. The first is life that we don't know about. The second is meteorites. And the third is geological processes, which means that the stones are formed by themselves, ”says Eigenbrod.

The second discovery is the detection of three specific types of organic molecules in the surface layer.

NASA emphasizes that the discovery of methane molecules does not mean the discovery of life on the planet. Despite the fact that on Earth, methane is indeed often of biogenic origin.

The rover's spectrometer analyzing the composition of the atmosphere over the past three years has recorded seasonal fluctuations in methane - the concentration during these fluctuations changes three times!

Paul Mahaffy:

We are talking about the discovery of "intriguing" organic molecules in the atmosphere of Mars - methane!

the conference has started!

The Russian neutron detector DAN ("Dynamic neutron albedo") was also installed on board. DAN is a neutron "probe" - the generator of the device irradiates the planet's surface with high-energy neutrons and, by the property of the secondary neutron flux, determines the content of hydrogen, and hence water, as well as hydrated minerals. Areas with a large amount of these substances are of the greatest interest for the search for traces of life.

Gale Crater was not chosen for landing by chance - in the distant past it was a Martian sea, and at its bottom there were accumulated minerals formed during the life of this reservoir. It was assumed that the study of its soil will answer the question of the existence of life on Mars.

In the meantime, let's remember the history of this rover. It was delivered to Mars on August 6, 2012. The rover was sent to the Red Planet to find out if conditions were suitable for life on Mars, to collect detailed data on the climate and geology of Mars, and to prepare for the landing of humans on Mars.

The three-meter rover weighs 899 kg and moves at a speed of up to 144 m / h. It is equipped with cameras, a set of remote sensing instruments, a spectrometer, a bucket for soil sampling, a set of meteorological equipment. In total, it possesses 10 scientific instruments for studying the external conditions on the surface of Mars and 17 color and black-and-white cameras for navigation and filming.

The press conference will be attended by Paul Mahaffy, Director of the Solar System Research Department at the Space Flight Center. Goddard NASA; Jennifer Eigenbrod, Specialist, Goddard Space Flight Center; Chris Webster, Chris Webster, Senior Research Fellow, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena; Ashvin Vasavada, Research Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In NASA, journalists are often convened in advance to announce new results of space missions, as it was this time. The journalists were invited to the NASA headquarters in Washington. The theme is a new discovery made by the famous Curiosity rover. The meeting is timed to coincide with the publication of scientific articles about this discovery in the journal Science. The essence of the discovery was not announced in advance, it is known only to scientists and science journalists who have a subscription to Science. However, the articles there are published under a strict embargo, so this cannot be talked about until 21.00 Moscow time. Let's just say that this is very interesting and concerns the eternal Martian question.

Good evening, dear readers of Gazeta.Ru, this evening we together with you will follow the unusual announcement announced by NASA a few days ago, which concerns an important scientific discovery made on the surface of Mars.