Alkanes on Mars
14 comments
·March 27, 2025lproven
FWIW I am fairly sure the name is a reference to an old Robert Heinlein novel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podkayne_of_Mars
I quite enjoyed it at the time, and I think Lowe is about as old as me...
api
The presence of hydrocarbons would be useful to potential future settlers too, since it can be used as feedstock for things like plastics and petrochemicals.
It can be made from CO2 + H2O with a lot of energy, but it'd be easier to have at least some ready-made to get started.
floxy
Does anyone know if these hydrocarbons are in "useful" concentrations, or "detectable" concentrations (ppb).
andrewflnr
Considering how hard they were to detect, I'm guessing no.
jugg1es
So much circumstantial evidence of past life on mars is infuriating. Wish we could find something definitive!
semi-extrinsic
Note that we see a lot of complex polyaromatic hydrocarbons in interstellar dust across the galaxy. And we know these can sometimes have quite long alkane chains attached or "inside". I don't think we can rule out stuff like that decomposing at those GC/MS conditions and giving the same signal. And that's even before the leap to fatty acids which may or may not have a biological origin.
TheSpiceIsLife
Gas Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry
augusto-moura
It will probably take a long time still. Might mot even be on our generation.
Maybe if research gets more investment we could get there faster
tim333
I know he's gone a bit nuts but Musk + SpaceX are working on sending stuff.
bboygravity
Why nuts?
symbolicAGI
There is sufficient circumstantial evidence for bacterial life on Mars.
The (perhaps religiously) conservative science establishment refuses to conclusively accept it.
When a robotic mission is sent to Mars with the express purpose of finding current life, then it will become obvious that hardened bacteria spores not only survive in our solar system's space, but thrive in the most difficult environments. And what about that stuff growing outside the international space station?
The question about why certain bacteria on earth are very resistant to the sun's harmful radiation is waiting to be solved.
The threat to some of the world's religions is the hypothesis that the simplest life did not originate on this planet first. So what?
CamperBob2
Eh, religions have to dispel a dozen graver epistemic threats than that before breakfast every morning. If and when evidence of extraterrestrial life is found, religious people will adapt their beliefs to accommodate it and retcon it, just like they always have.
It's what they've done, very successfully, ever since they had to stop burning heretics at the stake.
kulahan
>adapt their beliefs to accommodate it and retcon it
I believe this is called “learning” in common nomenclature. They do the same thing in science very regularly, and it’s a pretty obvious part of discovering the world around you.
(.pdf) https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/content/uploadFiles/public... ("Long-chain alkanes preserved in a Martian mudstone")