Is there a physical chemical reaction that makes methane? I was under the impression that it required a biological catalyst.
Water can react with Rock and vulcanize, which can create methane.
I watched the thing.
What there seems to be is three specific areas that can be found to be Methane vents that occur in the Northern Summer, but not at other times (mar's seasons repeat over a two year span)
This methan has a very short life expectancy, much shorter than that of Earth's methane. They believe thta there may be the presence of oxidization molecules such as Hydrogen Peroxide that contribute to the shorter lifespan, or perhaps methane consuming microbes.
In total, the three vents are producing a massive about of methane, and are localized in to these regions, which are in the middle northern lattitudes.
Ther ehave yet to be found rpesence of toher chemical markers to explain this release of methane by way of either geological or biological menas.
If it is geological, the assumption would be that there should aslo be Sulfer Dioxide, as is found with terrestrial volcanic vents.
If there is a biological factor, then other gasses would be present that have yet to be found.
There may exist a third reasons for this methane release, as of yet undetermined, but further study is necessary.
Also, this methane relewase may not be being produced at teh moment, but instead is some sort of trapped preexisting methane that is being released by some means.
The question as to how the methane got there is quite intriguing. As well as the fact that it coincides with the northner summer. Will we see something similar in southern regions when the southern summer rolls around?
This is not like methane existing in the atmosphere, as it does on other plnets. During other seasons, there is far less methane in the Martian atmosphere than was recorded in this case.
The three hotspots are also indicative of a methane release point, and the levels in the atmosphere are not constant, as is the case with other atmopheres where we see large quantities of methane.
Nor is it uniform. This, combined with the relatively short life cycle, is why the determination of venting was possible.
The methods used were also quite interesting. They isolated a sliver of the planet and perfromed a spectrographical analysis of this strip, taking 30-50 spectra at a time, and repeated the process every 60 seconds.
I didn;t take notes, so I may have botched some things while explaining them. Sorry if I did.