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Comment by hughes | Hacker News Reader

Whatever process is causing the presence of methane can apparently produce hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the gas in a relatively short timeframe.

Considering that spacecraft have only landed on Mars in the last few decades, a contaminant microbe would have to truly thrive in an extremely inhospitable Martian environment, survive spaceflight and decontamination, yet also be undetectable in the places on Earth where the spacecraft was constructed.

Yes, it's possible, but it seems so beyond the realm of probability...

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> contaminant microbe would have to truly thrive in an extremely inhospitable Martian environment, survive spaceflight and decontamination, yet also be undetectable in the places on Earth where the spacecraft was constructed

To be fair, if those possibilities are true, they would also be revolutionary and should be considered (e.g., do they imply a mechanism that makes panspemria feasible?).

Likewise for an previously unknown mechanism of methane production - this itself would help us understand the origin of life. (This is one explanation, "geological" one, mentioned in the article.)

"Single celled microorganisms found to exist in conditions on Mars that mirror some of the conditions in which single celled microogranisms exist on Earth", however, seems to be a more boring one - if turns out not to be true, understanding why that happens to be the case, is also valuable.

Microbes could simply be airborne from earth, thriving in the upper atmosphere and attach themselves to the spaceship there.

> panspemria

Had to look this one up. I’m assuming you meant panspermia.

> the theory that life on the earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment.

Are we absolutely sure it's the right gas? Maybe we just read it as methane but it's something else

It was measured with at least two different spectrometers: the Curiosity rover measured it with a laser spectrometer, and Mars Express with its PFS. That leaves little doubt.

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