{"id":124650,"date":"2021-07-06T21:23:19","date_gmt":"2021-07-07T04:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/methane-keeps-showing-up-on-mars-nasa-just-got-closer-to-solving-the-mystery"},"modified":"2021-07-06T21:23:19","modified_gmt":"2021-07-07T04:23:19","slug":"methane-keeps-showing-up-on-mars-nasa-just-got-closer-to-solving-the-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/methane-keeps-showing-up-on-mars-nasa-just-got-closer-to-solving-the-mystery","title":{"rendered":"Methane Keeps Showing Up on Mars. NASA Just Got Closer to Solving The Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/methane-keeps-showing-up-on-mars-nasa-just-got-closer-to-solving-the-mystery2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Methane is an organic molecule that hangs around in Earth\u2019s atmosphere and is <a href=\"https:\/\/exploration.esa.int\/web\/mars\/-\/46038-methane-on-mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">mostly produced by living organisms<\/a>, most notoriously by burping cows. Its detection on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/mars\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Mars\">Mars<\/a>, on the other hand, has been a weird mystery for planetary scientists.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/curiosity-has-detected-the-largest-amount-of-methane-on-mars-yet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">has picked up<\/a> tiny traces of methane <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/feature\/jpl\/curiosity-detects-unusually-high-methane-levels\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">numerous times<\/a> on the red planet. While these emissions might be coming from some geological process, it was possible they could indicate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/scientist-s-have-a-new-theory-on-mar-s-methane-mystery-and-its-implications-for-life\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the presence of some sort of life form<\/a> on Mars (unlikely to be cows, of course).<\/p>\n<p>As you\u2019d expect, scientists are really excited by that prospect, but the data are confusing. Higher in the atmosphere, orbiting technology from the European Space Agency (ESA) has detected <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/feature\/jpl\/curiosity-detects-unusually-high-methane-levels\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">no methane<\/a> in any concentration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Methane is an organic molecule that hangs around in Earth\u2019s atmosphere and is mostly produced by living organisms, most notoriously by burping cows. Its detection on Mars, on the other hand, has been a weird mystery for planetary scientists. In recent years, NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover has picked up tiny traces of methane numerous times on [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":465,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/465"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}