Methane – astroengine.com

The dwarf planet soap opera continues…

The dwarf planet Ceres. Fuzzy (NASA/Hubble)

Could the dwarf planet Ceres maintain life? Possibly, says a scientist from a German university. According to new research, this ex-asteroid (who did a deal with the IAU to sell out Pluto, trading in its asteroid status to become a dwarf planet, at the expense of Pluto being demoted from being a planet. Obviously) may have harboured microbial life near geothermal vents in hypothetical liquid oceans (I emphasise hypothetical). Not only that, but Ceres’ chilly microbes could have been kicked into space by meteorites, spreading life throughout the Solar System. Forget Mars (you’re looking too hard), forget Europa (a moon? With life? Pah), the new giver of life could be Ceres, the dwarf planet we know next to nothing about.

Then there’s Pluto. Not much chance of life there either (although it would be fun to speculate, there is methane there after all), but the hard-done-by newly-christened dwarf planet has a rather bizarre atmosphere. Its temperature profile is upside down. Oh, and Pluto has just been reunited with its planetary status… in Illinois only (because a governor really does know more about planets than 400 members of the International Astronomical Union).
Continue reading “Ceres: Life? Pluto: Not So Much”

The distribution of atmospheric methane originating from three principal regions on the Martian surface (NASA)

Today, NASA held a press conference detailing some significant discoveries from observations made of the Martian atmosphere. Using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility and Keck Telescope, scientists from the University of Hawaii and NASA were able to deduce the spectroscopic fingerprint of methane. Although scientists have known for a long time that methane exists in the Martian atmosphere, the big news is that there is lots of it, it appears to be constantly replenished and it is a huge indicator of biological processes under the surface.

Fortunately, I was able to watch the NASA TV broadcast of the press conference at 11am (PST), so I thought I’d try, for the first time, to do some live microblogging of the announcements using Twitter. So, rather than going into vast detail about today’s methane news (as the web has exploded with articles on the subject anyway), I thought I’d publish my Twitter feed during the conference…
Continue reading “Twitter Journalism: Methane on Mars, The Signature of Life?”