It's possible that life wiped itself out on Mars. That is not as crazy as it sounds.
While on Mars life did not evolve and persist.
Mars used to be warm and wet, according to evidence. Mars had surface water in the ancient Noachian Period. If this is true, Mars may have been a good place to live.
A new study shows that early Mars may have been hospitable to organisms that thrive in extreme environments. There are places on the ocean floor where methane can be released and converted into a waste product. According to the study, methanogens may have lived underground on Mars.
The study is about habitability and global cooling. It has been published in Nature Astronomy and is written by two people. There are two professors in the UArizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, one is a professor and the other is a graduate student.
According to the press release, the study shows that early Mars would have been a good place to host methanogenic microbes. The authors are not saying that life exists on the planet.
According to the paper, the microbes would have thrived in the briny rock that protected them from the sun. The underground environment would allow methanogens to persist and provide a diffuse atmosphere.
One of the earliest metabolisms to evolve on Earth was the hydrogenotrophic methanogens. Its viability on early Mars has never been evaluated. It has been this way until now.
There is a significant difference between ancient Mars and Earth. Most of the hydrogen on the planet is tied up in water. It was plentiful on Mars. The methanogens needed hydrogen to thrive. It would have helped trap heat in the planet.
He said that Mars may have been a bit cooler than Earth at the time, but not as cold as it is now. While current Mars has been described as an ice cube covered in dust, we imagine early Mars as a rocky planet with a porous crust soaked in liquid water.
Water is either fresh or salt on the planet. It's possible that the distinction wasn't needed on Mars. All of the water was briny.
The models were used to evaluate methanogens on Mars. They used a model of an ecological community of Earthlike microbes. The researchers were able to predict if methanogen populations were able to survive. They were able to predict what the population would do to the environment.
Boris Sauterey, the paper's first author, said that after they produced their model, they put it to work on Mars. We were able to evaluate the possibility of a Martian underground biosphere. How the chemistry of the Martian crust would have changed if a biosphere existed, and how the composition of the atmosphere would have changed.
We wanted to see if methanogens could live with the mix of rock and salty water on the Martian surface. The answer is that the microbes could have lived in the planet's crust.
How deep would you have to go to locate it? Researchers say it is a question of balance.
Mars was still cold even though the atmosphere held hydrogen and carbon. It is not as cold as modern Earth. The deeper you go, the less hydrogen and carbon can be found.
The problem is that even on early Mars, it was still very cold on the surface. The question is how deep the biology needs to go to find the right compromise between temperature and availability of Molecules from the Atmosphere. The models we used showed that the communities in the upper few hundreds of meters were the most happy.
They would have been in the upper crust for a while. The communities would change the environment as they continued to take in hydrogen and carbon. All of the above and below ground processes were modeled by the team. They predicted how the weather would change Mars.
The team believes that the methanogens would initiate a global cooling as they changed the atmosphere. As the planet cooled, the briny water in the crust would freeze. It would have made the surface of Mars unpalatable. The organisms would have been moved further underground as the planet cooled. The regolith would be plugged by ice, blocking the atmosphere from reaching those depths of energy.
Within a few tens or hundreds of thousands of years, Mars' atmosphere would have been completely changed by biological activity. If hydrogen were removed from the atmosphere, the climate would have been cooled.
What did the result look like? It's called extinction.
The problem these microbes would have faced is that their energy source would have been gone, and they would have had to find a new one. They would have had to go much deeper into the ground. It's hard to say how long Mars would have been free of precipitation.
Future missions have the best chance of finding evidence of the planet's ancient life in certain places. The authors say that the most productive populations would have been near the surface. Given the technology currently embarked on Martian rovers, the first few meters of the Martian crust are the most easy to explore.
Hellas Planitia is the best place to look for evidence of underground life because it is free of ice. The region is not suitable for rover exploration due to the powerful dust storms. If humans ever visit Mars, Hellas Planitia is an ideal location.
Life on ancient Mars isn't a revolutionary idea anymore. The more interesting part of the research may be how early life changed. The development of more complex life occurred after that event.
Simple life forms were common on Early Earth. There was a new pathway to harness energy. The first inhabitants of Earth thrived in the absence of oxygen. The cyanobacteria use photosynthesis for energy and produce oxygen as by-products.
Earth's first tenants didn't like oxygen. The mats created a region of oxygenated water around thebacteria, which they thrived in. The oceans and atmosphere were oxygenated by cyanobacteria. Oxygen can't handle methanogens and Earth's other early life. The death of all those primitive organisms comes close to being called an extinction by scientists. Modern-day Earth has environments that are oxygen-poor.
That was the world. There wasn't a new way to get energy on Mars. Mars became cold and lost its atmosphere. I wonder if Mars is dead now.
It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 Modelling shows that there could be a source of hydrogen in the Mars' crust. The study showed that hydrogen could be obtained by breaking apart water molecule. Radiolysisysis has allowed isolated communities ofbacteria to persist for millions of years. Up to 400 times the carbon mass of humans can be found in life buried in Earth's crust. The deepest part of the world's oceans is almost twice the volume of the rest. Hydrogen created by radiolysis could be feeding life in Mars. There are methane detections that are not clear.
Many scientists believe that the Solar System's most likely place to have life is the sub-Mars region. I'm sorry, Europe. Maybe it does and we will find it someday.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
