'Alien burp' may have been detected on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover

[Judi Lynn]

By Ben Turner about 9 hours ago

The methane is likely to have been produced recently


A group of scientists may have just pinpointed the location on Mars of a mysterious source of methane, a gas most often produced by microbes — and NASA's Curiosity rover could be right on top of it.

Methane blips have pinged on Curiosity's detection systems six times since the rover landed in Mars' Gale crater in 2012, but scientists weren't able to find a source for them. Now, with a new analysis, researchers may have traced the methane burps to their origin.

To calculate the unknown methane source, researchers at the California Institute of Technology modeled the methane gas particles by splitting them into discrete packets. Taking into account the wind speed and direction at the time of their detection, the team traced their parcels of methane back through time to their possible points of emission. By doing this for all of the different detection spikes, they were able to triangulate regions where the methane source is most likely located — with one being just a few dozen miles away from the rover.

"[The findings] point to an active emission region to the west and the southwest of the Curiosity rover on the northwestern crater floor," the researchers wrote in their paper. "This may invoke a coincidence that we selected a landing site for Curiosity that is located next to an active methane emission site."

More:
https://www.space.com/curiosity-finds-alien-mars-methane-source?utm_sou

[underpants]

1. They'd call it something different if it was from Uranus

[unblock]

2. One might expect a uranal emission to be more ureic than methanic....

[Javaman]

3. Alien Burp was the name of of my college Twisted Sister cover band. nt