[troutman]

Do We FINALLY Have Proof of Life on Mars?

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/do-w...f-life-on-mars

With all that said, this new round of headlines concerning Mars is worth some closer attention. One of the first reports came from The Independent whose headline reads: There just might be life on Mars….NASA Curiosity rover picks up mysterious methane ‘burps’ that could possibly be coming from alien organisms. In fact, Curiosity Tweeted the news: Certified organics! I detected organics for the 1st time on the surface of Mars. But the real “main event” took place at a press conference at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California when NASA scientists announced that an instrument (The Tunable Laser Spectrometer or TLS) on the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover has detected varying levels of methane on Mars.

So now we have the announcement that the TLS, which is a very precise tool for measuring methane content of the Martian atmosphere at ground level, has measured different levels of methane compared to some of its prior readings, confirming the variability of methane levels in Mars’ atmosphere. Variability in the methane is one of the prerequisites for concluding that organic life exists on Mars. It is not the only requirement, but it does fill in one piece of the “Life on Mars” puzzle quite nicely.

So is NASA getting ready for a big press conference to declare there is definitely life on Mars? Negative. Let’s face it, this would be one of the most important scientific discoveries of human history. NASA or the ESA or any other space agency can not get this wrong. It is simply too important, there is no immediate urgency behind this discovery, so there is no reason to rush in to any premature or highly embarrassing announcements. Science requires time to make discoveries, and time to understand what has been discovered. Mars isn’t going away, and if organisms are responsible for the methane variations, they are not going away either.