S27E53: Methane on Mars and Io's Infernos: Uncovering Cosmic Mysteries

[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime Series 27 Episode 53 for broadcast on the 1st of May 2024.

[00:00:06] Coming up on SpaceTime, a new hypothesis to explain the Martian methane mystery,

[00:00:12] a spectacular jagged mountain and lava lakes discovered on the volcanic moon Io,

[00:00:19] and trouble as NASA's planet hunting satellite TESS suddenly shuts down.

[00:00:24] All that and more coming up on SpaceTime.

[00:00:27] Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary

[00:00:48] A new study may help explain why scientists are continuing to detect methane in the atmosphere

[00:00:53] of the red planet Mars. Martian methane readings have been detected for years by both spacecraft

[00:01:00] orbiting the red planet and by Earth-based telescopes, and follow-up ground observations

[00:01:05] by NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover then confirm the readings during its exploration of Gale Crater.

[00:01:12] Methane can be produced by chemical processes such as geological reactions involving water and rocks

[00:01:17] deep underground. It's most commonly produced here on Earth through biological processes

[00:01:22] by bacteria or flatulent cattle. Now scientists are yet to spot any Martian cows,

[00:01:30] so the ongoing detection of methane on the red planet has researchers scratching their heads.

[00:01:36] The Martian methane also appears to be happening seasonally,

[00:01:39] usually only when it gets warm. Now all that bodes well for a possible biological cause,

[00:01:45] but before you get too excited, when it gets warm on Mars, frozen permafrost often turns liquid,

[00:01:52] and so water and rocks could still be the answer. And remember scientists still haven't

[00:01:56] found any convincing signs of either current or past life on Mars, yet Curiosity has

[00:02:02] continually sniffed out traces of methane gas near the surface. However, the Karst-Side

[00:02:08] Six-Wheeled Rover has found that the methane it's spotted is behaving in unexpected ways in Gale

[00:02:13] Crater. For example, it appears at night and then disappears during the day, and it fluctuates

[00:02:20] seasonally, sometimes spiking to levels 40 times higher than usual. And surprisingly,

[00:02:26] methane isn't accumulating in the atmosphere. For example, the European Space Agency's EXO

[00:02:32] Mars Trace Gas Orbiter, which was sent to Mars specifically to study gas in the atmosphere,

[00:02:37] has not detected any methane. So why does some scientific instruments detect methane in the

[00:02:42] red planet's atmosphere while others don't? Well, now a report in the Journal of Geophysical

[00:02:48] Research Planets may have an answer, or at least part of one. It suggests that the methane,

[00:02:53] no matter how it's produced, could be sealed under solidified salt that might form part

[00:02:58] of the Martian regolith, that is the red planet's soil made up of broken rock and dust.

[00:03:04] When temperatures rise, either at specific times of the day or during warmer seasons,

[00:03:08] the seal weakens and the methane seeps out. The study's lead author Alexander Pavlov from

[00:03:14] NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, says his computer modelling suggests

[00:03:18] that the gas can also erupt in puffs when the seal cracks under the pressure of, well,

[00:03:23] say a robe of the size of Curiosity driving over it. The hypothesis may help explain why

[00:03:29] methane's only been detecting Gale Crater, given that it's one of two places on Mars where a robot

[00:03:34] is roving at the moment and where it's drilling down through the surface. The other is Jezero

[00:03:39] Crater, where NASA's Perseverance rover's at work, but it doesn't have a specialised

[00:03:44] methane detecting instrument on board. Interestingly, Pavlov traces the origins

[00:03:49] of his hypothesis to an unrelated experiment he led back in 2017. That involved growing

[00:03:55] microorganisms in a simulated Martian permafrost infused with salt, much like the Martian

[00:04:00] permafrost really is. Pavlov and colleagues tested whether bacteria known as halophiles,

[00:04:06] which live in saltwater lakes and other salt-rich environments here on Earth,

[00:04:09] could thrive in similar conditions on Mars. The micro-growing results proved inconclusive,

[00:04:16] but the researchers noticed something unexpected. The top layer of soil tended to form a

[00:04:21] crust the salty ice sublimated, that is turned straight from a salt into a gas,

[00:04:26] leaving the salt behind. Pavlov says he remembered the soil crust observations when

[00:04:32] Curiosity detected a methane burst that no one could explain. And that's when he and his team

[00:04:37] began testing the conditions that could form and crack hardened salt seals. So, the authors

[00:04:43] tested five samples of permafrost. These were infused with varying concentrations of a salt

[00:04:49] called perchlorate, which is widespread on the red planet. Now there's likely no permafrosting

[00:04:54] gale crater today, but the seals could have formed long, long ago when gale crater was

[00:04:59] both colder and icier. The authors exposed each sample to different temperatures and air

[00:05:04] pressures inside a Mars simulation chamber. Periodically, Pavlov's team injected neon,

[00:05:10] a methane analog, underneath the soil sample and measured the gas pressure below and above it.

[00:05:15] Higher pressure beneath the sample implied the gas was trapped. Ultimately, a seal formed

[00:05:21] under Mars-like conditions within 3 to 13 days only in samples with between 5 and 10 percent

[00:05:26] per chlorate concentration. Now it's worth pointing out that's much higher than the salt

[00:05:31] concentration levels Curiosity's actually measured in Gale crater. But the regolith

[00:05:35] there is rich in a different type of salt mineral called sulfates, which Pavlov's team

[00:05:40] now want to test next to see if they can also form seals. This report from NASA TV.

[00:06:10] By looking for organic molecules containing carbon. Organic molecules are the backbone of

[00:06:16] all life on Earth, though they can also come from nonliving sources. Today the surface of

[00:06:21] Mars readily destroys organics making them difficult to detect. Curiosity landed in Gale

[00:06:27] crater on an ancient lake bed. A few months after arrival it drilled into sedimentary rocks

[00:06:33] and detected traces of organic molecules using an instrument called SAM. Now Curiosity

[00:06:40] is climbing the mound in the middle of Gale crater and SAM has made a subsequent detection

[00:06:45] of organics. This new detection is exciting because it comes from rocks that are billions

[00:06:50] of years old. That means that the organic material within them is extremely ancient.

[00:06:55] Some of the organics that SAM has detected contain sulfur, likely introduced through

[00:07:00] geological processes. Sulfur can act as a preservative binding organic molecules together

[00:07:06] to make them tougher and protecting them from oxidation. In fact, sulfur is the element that

[00:07:11] makes hair and fingernails tough as well as vulcanized rubber. Martian sulfur has probably

[00:07:17] had a similar effect on these old organic molecules helping to preserve them over geological

[00:07:23] timescales. SAM made the new detections by heating samples of crush rock to very high

[00:07:29] temperatures above a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. This vaporizes samples and release several

[00:07:34] species of small hydrocarbons like benzene and propane. Because the hydrocarbons were released

[00:07:40] at such high temperatures, they may be the fragments of bigger heavier molecules within

[00:07:45] the rock similar to caridgens. On earth, caridgens are found in rocks like black shale

[00:07:51] and coal and are the products of ancient plant and bacteria. We don't know if the organics

[00:07:59] on Mars are of biological origin but it's exciting to find such old material preserved

[00:08:03] right at the surface. This finding is also encouraging for future exploration. NASA and

[00:08:08] the European Space Agency are preparing to send the next generation of rovers to Mars carrying

[00:08:14] new technologies to search for signs of microbial life. In the distant past, Mars was much warmer

[00:08:21] and wetter than it is today. The rocks at Gale Crater tell us it was once an environment

[00:08:27] where life as we know it could have survived. The discovery of ancient organic molecules shows

[00:08:33] that another ingredient of life was present at that time and it broadens our understanding

[00:08:38] of habitability of both ancient and modern Mars. This is space time. Still to come,

[00:08:46] spectacular jagged mountains and lava lakes discovered on the volcanic moon Io and NASA's

[00:08:51] planet hunting test satellite suddenly shuts down. All that and more still to come on space time.

[00:09:14] Data collected by NASA's Juno spacecraft during two recent flybys of the volcanic

[00:09:18] Jovian moon Io has highlighted some of this violent world's most dramatic features,

[00:09:23] including a spectacular jagged mountain spire and an almost glass smooth lake of cooling lava.

[00:09:30] The new findings were announced at the European Geophysical Union's General Assembly in Vienna

[00:09:35] by Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San

[00:09:40] Antonio, Texas. Juno made extremely close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February this year,

[00:09:49] in both cases getting to within about 1,500 kilometers of the moon's surface. Juno's most

[00:09:54] recent flyby of Io on April 9th only came within 16,500 kilometers of its surface, but it

[00:10:01] did allow the spacecraft to obtain the first close-up images of Io's northern latitudes.

[00:10:07] Bolton says Io is simply littered with volcanoes, some of which were spotted erupting. Juno also

[00:10:14] studied a 200-kilometer-long lava lake called Loki Patera. The lake has strange islands

[00:10:20] embedded in the middle of a potential magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The observations

[00:10:25] recorded by Juno suggest that parts of Io's surface are as smooth as glass,

[00:10:30] in fact they're very reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass here on Earth.

[00:10:35] Maps generated with data collected by Juno's microwave radiometer instrument reveal Io not

[00:10:40] only has a surface that's relatively smooth and flat compared to Jupiter's other Galilean moons,

[00:10:46] but it also has poles that are much colder than its middle latitudes.

[00:10:51] During Juno's extended mission, the spacecraft flies closer to the North Pole of Jupiter

[00:10:56] with each pass, and this changing orientation has allowed Juno to improve its resolution of

[00:11:02] Jupiter's northern polar cyclones. The data allows multi-wavelength comparisons of the poles,

[00:11:08] revealing that not all polar cyclones are created equal. Juno's project scientist Steve

[00:11:14] Levin from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California says that perhaps

[00:11:18] the most striking example of this disparity can be found in the central cyclone at Jupiter's

[00:11:23] North Pole. It's clearly visible in both infrared and visible light images,

[00:11:28] but its microwave signature is nowhere near as strong as other nearby storms,

[00:11:33] and this tells scientists that its subsurface structure must be very different from these

[00:11:38] other cyclones. The Juno team continue to collect more and better microwave data with

[00:11:43] every orbit, and they're expecting to develop very detailed three-dimensional maps

[00:11:47] of these intriguing polar storms. One of the mission's primary science goals is to collect

[00:11:52] data that could help scientists better understand Jupiter's water abundance.

[00:11:56] Now, to do this, the Juno scientists aren't looking for water itself. Instead, they're

[00:12:01] looking to quantify the presence of hydrogen and oxygen, the two molecules which make up

[00:12:06] water in Jupiter's atmosphere. An accurate estimate is critical for piecing together the

[00:12:11] puzzle of our solar system's formation. See, Jupiter was likely the first planet to form out

[00:12:16] of the protoplanetary disk 4.6 billion years ago, and it also contains most of the gas and

[00:12:22] dust that wasn't incorporated into the sun. Finding water abundance in Jupiter also has

[00:12:28] important implications for the gas giant's meteorology, including how wind currents

[00:12:32] flow on Jupiter and its internal structure. Back in 1995, NASA's Galileo probe provided

[00:12:39] the earliest data set on Jupiter's water abundance. That happened during the spacecraft's

[00:12:44] 57-minute suicidal descent into the Jovian atmosphere. It's one of the stories we covered

[00:12:49] on one of our very first episodes of Star Stuff, the precursor to space time, on ABC News Radio.

[00:12:56] The data collected by Galileo, however, created more questions than answers, indicating the gas

[00:13:02] giant's atmosphere was unexpectedly hot and contrary to what computer models had predicted,

[00:13:07] bereft of water. Galileo did amazing science, but its data was so far afield from existing

[00:13:14] models of Jupiter's water abundance that scientists considered whether or not the location

[00:13:18] it sampled could simply be an outlier. Now, new data from the Juno probe shows that the long-sought-after

[00:13:24] water abundance is actually nearer Jupiter's equator. That's roughly three to four times

[00:13:29] the solar abundance when compared to hydrogen. So this definitively demonstrates that the

[00:13:34] Galileo probe's entry site was an anomalously dry desert-like region. The results support the

[00:13:40] belief that during the formation of our solar system, water ice material may have been the

[00:13:45] source of the heavy element enrichment, chemical elements heavier than hydrogen and helium,

[00:13:49] that were accreted by Jupiter during the gas giant's formation and evolution.

[00:13:54] The formation of Jupiter remains puzzling because Juno results on the core of this

[00:13:59] king of planets suggest a very low water abundance there, a mystery that scientists

[00:14:04] are still trying to sort out. Data collected during the remainder of Juno's extended mission

[00:14:09] may help, both in enabling scientists to compare Jupiter's water abundance near the poles to that

[00:14:14] in the equatorial region and by shedding new light on the structure of the planet's dilute

[00:14:19] core. Juno will execute its 61st flyby of Jupiter on May 12th. This is space time.

[00:14:27] Still to come, NASA's planet-hunting test satellite suddenly shuts down, and later in

[00:14:33] the science report, discovery of a link between a form of rheumatoid arthritis and gene mutations

[00:14:39] found in blood cancer. All that and more still to come on space time. NASA's transiting

[00:15:00] exoplanet survey satellite TESS has entered safe mode, temporarily suspending science operations.

[00:15:07] Mission managers say the spacecraft itself remains stable. The incident happened during

[00:15:12] routine science operations, and it follows a separate safe mode event which took place

[00:15:17] last month during scheduled engineering activities. Mission managers now are trying

[00:15:22] to determine whether these two events are connected. During the first shutdown,

[00:15:26] controllers powered up the spacecraft's instruments again, and following the successful

[00:15:31] download of previously collected science data stored on the mission's recorder, the probe was

[00:15:35] returned to normal operations. Launched in 2018, TESS scans the skies hunting for planets beyond

[00:15:43] our solar system. This is space time. And time now to take another brief look at some of the

[00:16:04] other stories making news in science this week with a science report. Scientists have discovered

[00:16:10] a link between a less common form of rheumatoid arthritis and gene mutations found in blood

[00:16:16] cancer. Researchers were surprised to discover that many patients with mutations in epigenetic

[00:16:22] genes that can lead to lazy marrow or acute myeloid leukemia also had a form of seronegative

[00:16:27] arthritis. You can read this story in full in the journal Blood. A University of Adelaide study

[00:16:35] of shallow water fish communities on rocky reefs in southeastern Australia has found climate

[00:16:40] change is helping tropical fish species invade temperate Australian waters. A report in the

[00:16:46] Journal of Animal Ecology claims the fish are travelling the Australian ecosystem's larvae

[00:16:51] caught in the East Australian current. Now they'd normally not survive in the cooler

[00:16:57] Australian ocean waters, but the warming East Australia current keeps the baby fish warm and

[00:17:02] increases their likelihood of survival. In fact, many subtropical fish species normally

[00:17:08] restricted to Queensland waters are now being found in Sydney Harbour, and fish normally found

[00:17:14] in temperate waters are being found further south in Tasmanian waters, but that's leaving

[00:17:19] Tasmanian coastal fish with nowhere to go. We already know that artificial intelligence chatbots

[00:17:27] tend to push a distorted woke view of the world, but now scientists are reporting more and

[00:17:32] more cases in which artificial intelligence are lying, although they don't use that term,

[00:17:37] they call it hallucinating. One such story of hallucination reported in the Journal of

[00:17:42] the American Medical Association concerns Google's AI chatbot Baird, which apparently

[00:17:47] hallucinated citing a research paper that doesn't exist. Scientists were using Baird to

[00:17:53] help prepare a presentation and they asked the chatbot to find references for the information

[00:17:58] provided, but on double checking the references it provided, researchers couldn't find any trace

[00:18:03] of the article titled Tilly Medicine for the Management of Airwaste Denoises and claimed by

[00:18:08] Baird to have been published in the scientific journal Expert Review of Respiratory Medicine.

[00:18:14] Baird was then asked to summarise the article, which he did quickly, but as the researchers

[00:18:18] continued to check up on Baird's work they were unable to find the article it referred to,

[00:18:23] despite extensive searches. So they asked Baird does this paper actually exist,

[00:18:29] and the chatbot responded, and I'm quoting here,

[00:18:51] Intrigued, the authors then turned to another chatbot, this one being Microsoft's pilot,

[00:18:56] which also claimed erroneously that it had found the non-existent article and even provided

[00:19:00] an abstract. That's the short summary at the beginning of a scientific paper.

[00:19:14] An Ohio based company has invented the first ever flamethrower-wielding robot dogs.

[00:19:20] Known as thermonators, these remote controlled electronic quadrupeds can

[00:19:24] shoot jets of fire over distances of more than 10 metres. The four-legged metallic monsters are

[00:19:30] equipped with laser sights and first person video feeds to navigate environments, as well

[00:19:34] as light sensitive mapping capabilities to operate at night. With the details we're

[00:19:39] joined by technology editor Alex Zaharov-Royt from techadvice.life.

[00:19:54] $1600 US to buy the dog by telephone with a controller, it's about $3000. But if you buy

[00:19:59] it from a terminator, they have not only a catchy name that sounds like terminator, but they have

[00:20:04] been able to modify it so that it has a flame thrower on it and it's selling for $9,420 US.

[00:20:10] It's an arc flame thrower on top and they're saying that it can be used for perimeter

[00:20:16] defense, wildfire control and prevention, agricultural management, ecological conservation,

[00:20:21] although burning things down doesn't sound very conservatory to me. Snow and ice removal.

[00:20:26] They call it back burning, don't they? Well yes, that wouldn't be true. And this

[00:20:29] guy's quite literally because the flame thrower is on the robotic dog's back.

[00:20:33] Well they're calling it the ultimate firepower companion and it's the first ever

[00:20:37] flame throwing quadruped robot dog. So I've seen some of these dogs in action, they're

[00:20:41] quite noisy and you know they can do little tricks, they can sort of dance and do the

[00:20:45] shuffle dance sort of thing, you can have them having a bit of fun. I mean there was a

[00:20:47] lidar mapping capability, there's first person view navigation, you've got this instant ignition,

[00:20:54] it's got a 30 foot firing range, remote observation, laser sighting, obstacle avoidance.

[00:20:59] So there's a bit of AI in there. It's not being manufactured by Cyberdime is it?

[00:21:04] Not to my knowledge, not yet no. I mean it's not that I'm aware of but look this

[00:21:10] company also has a flame thrower drone attachments and they've got other flames

[00:21:14] thrower so clearly they're in the flame business. Elon Musk was selling flame throwers for a while

[00:21:18] too wasn't he? He was yeah, look they're legal in 48 US states, they're not actually classified

[00:21:23] as a firearm. He made 10 000 and they sold out very quickly. I don't think he's making

[00:21:26] them anymore but look this is just a bit of fun. They've gotten a lot of publicity,

[00:21:29] they announced it halfway through 2023 so it's taken about nine months you know from the

[00:21:34] announcement to actually being available to purchase and so it's a bit of fun. People

[00:21:37] are going to buy for fun and you know but you have to have basically 10k spare and so if

[00:21:41] you do have 10k spare good luck to you. That's Alex Zaharov-Royd from techadvice.life.

[00:21:47] And that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday

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