Mars discovery
could be sign of life

Mauna Kea's NASA telescope
reveals methane emissions

HILO » A team of scientists using a telescope on Mauna Kea and another in Chile have discovered large concentrations of methane in the atmosphere of Mars, possibly indicating the presence of life there.

If some type of life form is releasing methane, it would probably be similar to microscopic creatures on earth such as bacteria, which can also release methane.

But team leader Michael Mumma cautioned that the methane could be created by either biological processes or geological ones. More studies need to be done to understand the phenomenon better, he said yesterday.

Mumma revealed the findings at an Astrobiology Institute of the National Aeronautical and Space Administration held April 10-14 in Boulder, Colo.

Final analysis of data and review by other scientists need to be done before the findings are formally published in two to three months, Mumma said in a telephone interview from his home in Maryland.

Mumma, a physicist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, discovered methane in the atmosphere of Mars several years ago, he said. His six-member team began follow-ups in 2003, using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea and the Gemini South observatory in Chile.

Two telescopes were used because the positions of Earth and Mars change, making observations best from the Northern Hemisphere for six months of the year followed by six months of observations in the Southern Hemisphere, he said.

The team found levels of methane six times higher in regions near the equator compared with the rest of Mars, Mumma said.

The regions are quite large, he said, hundreds of miles across. But the methane could simply be diffusing in the atmosphere. The actual sources could be much smaller. The type of instruments used prevented pinpointing the sources, he said.

There is no possibility that the methane is left over from a bygone age because sunlight and atmospheric conditions on Mars destroy methane in about 300 years, he said.

The high concentrations were found only in areas near the equator of Mars.

He declined to speculate about the possible meaning of finding high concentrations only at the equator.

Only three telescopes in the world have the instruments to perform the kind of search the team did, Mumma said.

Besides NASA's infrared telescope and Gemini South, the only other one is the Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea, he said. The team will now apply for viewing time on that instrument, he said. Information from that study could indicate precise spots where landing craft should be sent in the future, he said.