No Methane on Mars

The Mars rover Curiosity has been exploring the martian environment and sending in data that has the teams of researchers on Earth in raptures. However one of the notable ingredients missing from the data is methane. The hydrocarbon gas is one which most scientists taking an educated guess would expect to find on Mars, but so far Curiosity has not found any samples of it.

The presence of methane is a potential sign of the presence of life on the red planet. Many researchers have been hoping to find at least some signs of low forms of life such as bacteria and microbes on Mars. There have even been indications of the presence of methane in previous studies conducted.

Curiosity has analyzed different samples of the atmosphere at Mars for methane six times from October 2012 through June and detected none. While the absence of methane does not exclude the possibility of life altogether, as some terrestrial microbes do not produce methane at all, it does seem strange that the gas is not present in the atmosphere of Mars.

What is truly exciting is that the rover Curiosity has been able to uncover so many previously unknown facts about our neighboring planet. This has been one science project which will inspire generations of new scientists and researchers.