Warming Up To A Martian Carcass

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najab

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It's a crazy theory, but at least it has some science behind it:<br /><blockquote><br />The detection of methane on Mars has generated a lot of speculation about what could possibly be producing it. Is it coming out of active volcanoes?<br /><br />Maybe the methane results from some geologic or chemical process we don't yet understand. Or, since much of the methane on Earth is produced by biology, perhaps the faint whiffs of methane point to the existence of present-day life on Mars.<br /><br />Dorothy Oehler, of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, says there is another source worth considering. She suggests that some methane could come from the remains of past life on Mars - namely, from the thermal alteration of buried kerogen.<br /><br />Kerogen is ancient organic crud, the remains of decayed organisms. When buried kerogen is cooked by the Earth's internal heat, it turns into oil and methane.<br /></blockquote><p><br />Link</p>
 
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