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Written by staff

Thursday, 29 January 2009

New research using three ground-based telescopes has shown that nearly 21,000 tons of methane were released from the martian surface during a short period during 2003, according to a recent Associated Press story.

“This raises the probability substantially that life was there or still survives at the present,” study author Michael Mumma told The Associated Press.

“Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,” said Mumma in a recent NASA release. “At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif.”

Although generally associated with life, the methane could also have been caused be geologic shifts within the planet. There is also a slight chance that the methane could have come from a comet or asteroid hitting Mars.

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