A scientific says that he has found such a high concentration of methane on Mars that it only can be explained by the presence of life on the red planet. If confirmed, this could be the news of the millenium http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7014
The news only came out today at 2 p.m. It's going to raise some additional questions, even if we confirm that Mars has living organisms today. How closely related are they to Earth life? If they turn out to be closely related, which because of the plausible panspermatic mechanism they might be, then where did that life originate? Earth? Mars? Somewhere else?
Hum, Methane was recorded in the Martian atmosphere two years ago…. I think it’s the detection of a different gas – <b>formaldehyde</b>, in concentrations of 130 parts per billion, detected (possibly) by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer instrument on the Mars Express obiter. Formaldehyde is possibly produced by the oxidation of methane, but the scientist has calculated that it needs <i>2.5 million tonnes</i> of methane per year to produce it- which is magnitudes higher than what has been supposed or observed.
NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars, too http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_life_050216.html
