Quote:
Originally Posted by marki
Bert I have always been in awe of the greatest chemists on Earth....Prokaryotic cells.
Mark
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So on that note, the next Mars rover, 'Curiosity' will be launched in Nov 2011.
It will have an extensive payload of sensory equipment, the main one for detecting possible life will be SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars). It will have a Quadrupole MAss Spectrometer (QMS), a Gas Chromotograph (GC) and a Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS).
The TLS will be used to look for Methane which is a key biomarker. But methane can be produced by non-biological means, so when it is detected in the atmosphere of a planet, biology may not necessarily involved. The differentiator they've worked out is to look for the pecentage of Carbon 12 in the methane. The higher the percentage of C-12, the more likely the methane it is from a biological source.
Prokaryote by-products, specifically methane, is exactly what the TLS is engineered to look for.
But even here on Earth, it seems that Prokaryote methane falls outside the accepted range of biogenic methane, and I don't think they've quite figured out exactly why, just yet (?). They still have to consider the environment in which the C-12 measurements are taken, in order to talk about the probability that the origins are from biological sources.
Interesting article about it all is
here.
Even local detection of life (ie: at the site itself), seems to be a challenge for us at the moment ! Not particularly straight-forward.
Interesting …
Is remote isotopic detection of C-12 in Methane atmospheres possible ?
Cheers