I can understand that observation is independent of observer, but --- my question stands on: the following -- do or can you model a set of equations that bear your findings out based upon all data collected up to this point.

If I am not mistaken, there is a major difference in C-H bending frequency in and around 3000 and the subsequent blue-shift or red-shift that may occur as a result molecular milieu

O=C=O ... on the other hand should and does have a different C=O bending / rocking motion in its spectra... I do not recall the exact frequency (?) and the subsequent blue-shift or red-shift would be different.

In regards to masking or blending of spectral bands -- it, to me, would appear to be a matter of subtracting one from the other after a thorough data reduction is performed.

In short--- do you have the numbers which bear your finding or hypothesis to be correct?

__________________
"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

Do you doubt that they detected methane? They have monitored the various vibrations that show methane beyond doubt. This was not always so when first observations were made, but they found enough of the vibrations which combined together could not be mistaken for another compound.

Hello borman,

I feel like I am repeating a previous post of mine... the Viking 1/2 performed GC/MS experiments upon Martian atmosphere as you are probably are aware that, among some of the components -- there was CH4...

I am not attempting to ire you...(and not knowing who you are?) --- but my scientific background tells me that if I were to post this finding I would perform computational simulations to further justify and solidify my findings... I am not impugning your scientific integrity.

If you are in the process of publication-- excuse my criticism...

__________________
"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

I don't believe I was making any claim beyond what was discussed at the press release. They seemed to claim that the methane was destroyed within 4 years and possibly within one year. It used to be thought that methane had a half life of around 300 years on Mars, so a mechanism is needed to destroy it in short order to explain why the local concentrations do not spread out more over time. The most likely method suggested at the meeting was oxidation, perhaps via hydrogen peroxide on dust grains that can circulate from the upper atmosphere.

I am merely asking the obvious follow-up question: if methane is oxidised, then what happened to the water from the oxidation in those zones where water spectra did not overlap the methane signal? Where the signals overlap, one could say the water signal was possibly sourced by oxidation rather than be independently sourced. Of course, the water signal still could be independent. But the real puzzle is the absence of a water signal at the presumed site of methane destruction in the dry zones if natural oxidation is the mechanism. How does the water hide in one place but not the other?

My bold emphasis---

As is fairly well known--(?) -- the Antarctic has been a proving ground for Martian missions since at least the 1970s--- one of current considerations of Antarctic research is the prevalence of CH4 that is incorporated into the ice crystal structure via clathrate encapsulation ( the alarm was first sounded on CH4 when global warming was considered ), --in late 1999 or 2000 --- in regards to CH4 disappearance -- one possible culprit that you cited might be the perchlorate in the ice. It may be safe to assume that the perchlorate oxidizes the CH4 into CO2 and HCl .. the stoichiometry is not so obvious because I don't have all the data in front of me.... The solid ice serves as a penetrable "vessel" -- of sorts that allows the perchlorate to oxidize the CH4 and in the end products HCl and CO2 ... some of this borders on speculation but it is a safer way to go if there really is no biological mechanism to speak of... The solid water ( or ice-- if you want to say...) has more "?weird" properties than I can shake the proverbial stick at it...
especially in such an interesting milieu as Mars

__________________
"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

There may be one speculative idea that rather suffers from the coincidence problem that might hide the water:

If the dust grains contain rust and hydrogen peroxide and get lofted high enough into the upper atmosphere to benefit from the proper light frequencies from the sun, the hydrogen peroxide can serve as a catalyst with the photoelectric energy to reduce the rust to a less oxidized state. If this dust with the hydrogen peroxide still present happens upon a cloud of methane, then the hydrogen peroxide will oxidise the methane and the available water can assist in returning the reduced iron oxide to a more completely oxidised state. This would leave the destroyed methane cloud dry at the expense of oxidising any iron grains to completion. If the same dust cloud, now without the reduced iron oxide, meets up with another methane cloud, the peroxide will still destroy the methane but the grains no longer have a need for the water and it will appear in the spectra as a byproduct.

The coincidence problem is that there would have to be an order or queing where the dust cloud attacks the methane cloud. The dry destruction would have to be first and then the same dust cloud would attack another methane cloud leaving the water signal extant. There would have to be quite a number of futher observations that track both the required dust cloud and its interactions with the methane clouds to witness the first dry then wet rhythm to test this idea before it could be taken too seriously. From observations of hydrogen peroxide spectra at different elevations, there are bits and pieces that might help to suggest this scenario, but not enough information to form a well connected theory.

This is interesting because... all of my synthetic organic chemistry experience tells me that H2O2 is too unstable to be viable in a Martian environment... if it does--perchance-- play a role -- my gut instinct tells me that it may be through the "complexation with various metallic species" via previously little-known mechanism.

aside:
_________________

This calls to mind some of the brilliant and idiosyncratic synthetic reagents invented by Dr. E. J. Corey -- he and his intellectual family were responsible for the introduction numerous organo-metallic oxidation, reduction and many synthetic steps that used transition metals as the "heart" of their inventions.

__________________
"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

Some Martian Hydrogen Peroxide links

Hydrogen Peroxide on Mars

http://irtfweb.ifa.hawaii.edu/resear...O2_on_Mars.pdf

http://www.obspm.fr/actual/nouvelle/...perox.en.shtml

http://www.wired.com/science/discove.../2004/03/62469

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/relea...peroxide.shtml

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=13756

ICARUS abstract:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...729a770a2b9767

Hope this helps some

LOL, surprise surprise in the midst of a credit crunch and also a new president on his way in who wants to make cuts, Nasa comes out with this I wonder why :-)

Kind regards,

Paul

You said it.

Let's cut Ares I and Ares V and use the savings to fly dozens more Delta IIs out to Mars.

Yawn.

Out of professional coutesy, NASA does not have these press conferences until the embargo is lifted which coincides with the day of publication in a peer reviewed journal. In this case it is the January 16, 2009 Science Express.

They seemed to have more to say on the topic, but those comments would be embargoed until the next publication. So stay tuned to NASA for future press releases upon such publication.

The present timing is an accident of publication time rather than some conspiracy attempt to garner interest at this time. Most of the infromation from the conference was already available from Mumma's DPS 40 talk a couple months ago. Indeed it was a bit surprising that comments from the DPS talk with respect to the MRO's HiRise imaging were left out of this press release. Perhaps this will be part of a future press release because it may be associated with another upcoming paper.

Note that typically takes 6 months or so to write a paper and another 6 months to go through the review process. Sometimes longer. Any coincidence between the actual publication of a paper (in this case in Science Express) and events in the outside world is just that, coincidence.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

No problem would the story below count as proof?


Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama released today the education plan he would enact if elected. The full 15-page plan includes a variety of proposals, including reforming early education programs. The last section of the plan, titled “A Commitment to Fiscal Responsibility” explains how he would pay for these initiatives. The passage of relevance here: “The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years,” among other steps. According to MSNBC, Obama would leave in place $500 million/year for Constellation’s “manufacturing and technology base”, but would otherwise transfer the funding to the education effort. None of the campaign’s official statements or other media reports indicate any alternative measures the campaign would take to address what, on its face, would appear to be a five-year delay in the introduction of Ares 1, Orion, and the other main components of NASA’s current exploration architecture.
(A potentially ironic item, depending on your opinion on the importance of Constellation: one other section of the Obama education plan is titled “Make Math and Science Education a National Priority”.)
The Republican National Committee has criticized the move to delay Constellation, The Hill reports, quoting RNC spokesman Danny Diaz: “It is ironic that Barack Obama’s plan to help our children reach for the stars is financed in part by slashing a program that helps us learn about those very same stars.”

I am not trying to upset anyone.

Kind regards,

Paul

Not sure about any one else, but in my opinion, it doesn't even count as evidence. As noted, the time scale involved in publication and peer review means that the President-elect had not put forward that policy statement when this train began its trip (nor was he the President-elect or even the leading candidate for his party at the time).

Mike

The Spelunking Spider

The timely announcement of local methane concentrations could enhance the chances that the MSL rover might be sent to one of these sites to investigate. If the MSL can sort out the isotopic ratios of the carbon in the methane, biomarkers associated with C12 can be observed.

If the isotopic analysis should support a biogenic signature, it will be difficult for the MSL to dig even a few meters much less kilometers to observe prospective biota.

Now it may be that the gas is exiting from what appears to be a point source similar to what is seen at the starting points of Dark Slope Streaks that could be consistent with the artistic images shown at the press meeting where the gas travels up to an impervious layer and then moves sideways until it exits out a face or point.

But it would be quite exciting if the gas were exiting from a cave. However, MSL does not have nightlights built upon the rover nor enough of an independent energy source to keep the lights on, nor the dexterity to navigate climbing down a cave. Much like the other two rovers on Mars, it will take advantage of sunlight to regenerate power. Also it is easier to transmit a signal from the surface than from underground.

If the MSL encountered a cave that was the source of one of the plumes, it would be nice if it had a detachable “spider” robot that had its own power and nightlights and the ability to transmit to the rover waiting outside the cave. Rather than trying to dig kilometers deep, the idea is to simply take advantage of the pre-existing “mine shaft” or cave to trace down to where the gas appears to source.

Do I think this is a likely scenario? The short answer is no, for then there is no obvious reason why the gas release is seasonal where the likely reason is that seasonal water or CO2 ice can plug small vents and then melt or sublimate away in the spring to allow the gas to escape. A cave entrance would normally be too large for an ice plug. But a landslide might have superficially closed the mouth of a cave to where ice plugs could be effective. One may only have to dig a short distance to get into a much larger cave. There might be surface clues that could point to cave openings that a trained eye might point to as a cave suspect.

So it might be important to task the MRO to take HiRes of suspected methane source areas images to look either directly for cave openings or for the slight telltale indicators that night point to a cave that has been obscured by a landslide. Without a cave there is no need for a “spelunking spider” and it is not part of the present MSL design anyways, but if we can decipher from MRO images that the suspected methane release zones do have what appears to be caves, we might have wished, alas too late, that we had these spiders along with the MSL to possibly see the underground source.

A problem with the MRO images is that they have a lot of information in them and there are not enough human eyes here on Earth to look at the images to find the information we are seeking. There have been campaigns to find the Beagle or the Mars Polar Lander from MRO images, but no success yet even though we believe they are down there somewhere. By contrast, here we are not sure if any caves actually exist in the areas of interest.

If caves should be spotted in MRO images that correlate with potential emission sites, it might actually be more appropriate to wait until a more specialized mission can be designed and sent to this site of interest. All the MSL targets have value and it is unfortunate we can not MIRV all of them at once with one payload carrying multiple MSL rovers. If they send the MSL to the methane site and it discovers that biomarkers are present and enhanced at the mouth of a cave, the NASA team may be quite besides themselves with curiosity and want to send the MSL in to investigate which most likely will result in a sudden end of mission and questions unanswered. This would be because the mission is unprepared for the discovery of a potential cave without any means of exploring it for suspected biota.

MSL should be able to sniff the breeze for methane and test rocks for organics.

ExoMars will be able to drill two metres down as well.

What is more disapointing is that the two Scout proposals that could detect methane, Great Escape and MOO, lost out to MAVEN, which cannot. It probably illustrates the lack of seriousness with which previous reports of Marsd methane from the Mars Express and Keck teams were taken.

Jon

Jon

I have noticed that CRISM can spot water and other minerals with rather high resolution.

Can it spot methane as well? It would be nice to get a finer view if it is coming from a particular vent(s).

I guess it would depnd on whether CRISM (or OMEGA for that matter) can detect the wavelengths where methane has a strong absorption.

BA Blog: Mars methane media mess

And he lists other responsible reports of the news.

__________________
0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

Fundamental and overtone

I checked the CRISM page and saw the range that goes form optical into the near infrared: 0.362 to 3.92 microns.

http://crism.jhuapl.edu/instrument/i...tem_Properties

There is an informative interview with Dr. Mumma by the Astrobiology Magazine where he stated the main bands for methane are 3.3 (C-H) and 7.7 microns:

The Martian Methane Surprise

http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1332.html

So I gather CRISM can only see one band clearly and not the other fundamental. The first overtone of the 7.7 micron band would be just within CRISM’s view possibly. So while the identification would not be as definitive, it would be suggestive or indicative of a methane signal.

Now that we have a rough idea of the vicinity to search and when to search, CRISM could supply a higher definition or resolution to possible source sites of potential vents.

ESA OMEGA can see from 1.0 to 5.2 micrometers, so it, like CRISM could see one fundamental and a possible harmonic of the 7.7 micron band. At high resolution it can look at 300 meter pixels.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...bodylongid=661

I emailed a friend on the DR*ISM team and he said that while there is the spectral coverage the sensitivity isn't high enough to detect the methane. It is designed to look for minerals at % levels, not methane at ppb. I assume the same applies to OMEGA. Bummer.

Jon

A signal that is too weak for direct detection by the orbiters is a setback. But perhaps they might still be useful in searching for a kind of "fossil" evidence tracing the methane destruction chemistry.

Suppose a scenario where the venting has been using the same vents and that these vents have opening every year for the past hundred thousand years. As a field geologist your comments on the viability of this scenario are welcome. The idea is that over the most recent geological age that methane will be as quickly destroyed over the past 100,000 years as it is today by whatever mechanisms that are in play today. While a portion of the gas will temporarily escape into the local atmosphere, where the venting occurs is where the destruction could be the greatest. Byproducts of the destruction may tarnish the immediate area around the vents such that after each of the 100,000 years there could be a build-up of a chemical tracer that could point to a cone that could be detected, now at percent levels, where the center of the cone indicates a possible long term venting source. This kind of like a geyser build-up of chemical gunk from destruction products that have had time to collect to become dense enough to be seen by CRISM. I don't know if this is actually feasable.

For example, in one of the methane regions, there has been a localised confirmation of carbonates. Now I am not suggersting that the carbonate signal is somehow related to the methane destruction, it may just be a coincidence. But looking at the carbonate signal as a "rainfall" that built up over an extended period such that it can be detected by the orbiters is along the lines of "fossil" evidence build-up of methane destruction is symbolic of what I am suggesting.

So it might still be worth looking for this "fossil" evidence, assuming there is anything valid about the premise.

I agree. There may be surface features indicative of venting - collapse pits for instance. there may be deep fractures.

There should be reduced mineral species in some abundance - siderite, anderite, sulphides, poorly ordered chlorite, for example. There may even be degraded organics like tholins or pyrobitumens. These should have distinctive spectral signatures and may leave dark halos roiund the morphological features.

Jon

Dark Spots as indicators

There were some targets imaged by the older MOC that showed some dark spots that only showed darker albedo. These seemed to be in some of the regions that are suggested to be target areas where plumes occur. Methane or clathrates of methane were speculated, but a definite methane signal was not agreed upon by a majority at the time the images were shot.

Some potential CRISM targets to look for chemical change

In Syrtis Major: http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_.../E1800771.html

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_.../E1600350.html

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_.../E1300145.html

From Arabia:

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_.../E1600823.html

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_.../E1401758.html

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_.../E1800981.html

From Terra Sabaea:
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_.../E1302274.html

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_.../E1700363.html

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e13_.../E1701888.html

There may be a number of different viable explanations for the albedo contrasts. But CRISM could further sort out, by performing a mineral analysis, if a chemical alteration that involved methane destruction along the way could be possibly responsible for some of the albedo contrasts.