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The #DailySpace brings you the universe at 10am PST / 1pm EST / 5pm GMT on twitch.tv/CosmoQuestX. Today’s #spacenews includes:

http://ewass.kuoni-congress.info/press/2019/06/22/muse-reveals-a-glowing-ring-of-light-in-the-distant-universe/

I would like to start by stating, this is not an image of a poorly drawn clown.The red arcs surrounded this distant galaxy are actually a background galaxy whose light has been bent around the central system, producing 4 different, magnified (and distorted) images.

Obtained with the Muse image on the Very Large Telescope, this image demonstrated that we have the capacity to measure details from the Earth’s surface we once thought could only be imaged from space. This weird red arc lets us study gas in galactic halos that existed early in our universe’s history.

The press release from the European Astronomical Society on this object doesn’t tell me exactly how far away that distant galaxy is, but states that we are viewing it in the first billion years of the universe. This is a newer instrument showing off what it’s capable of, and we all look forward to seeing the publication that will result from this work. For now though, we pretty much have to be content with a pretty image that isn’t of a clown!

https://mediarelations.uwo.ca/2019/06/24/life-on-mars/

And now to Mars. Or at least to rocks from Mars.

Over the weekend I learned something I didn’t know. Given the significant time, diamonds will decay into everyday graphite, like pencil led, but Zircons will sit there being hard and holding onto their gassy inclusions pretty much forever. This means that when we get meteorites on earth that contain zircons, we can – with a great deal of difficulty – get samples of gases that were in the vicinity when the zircon formed.

In tearing apart two samples, the one shown here, and

This shinier example here, scientists at Western University in Canada found that these 4,4 billion year old samples don’t show signs of the violent impacts that were taking place on Earth at the same time. This hints that our world’s era of heavy bombardments may have lasted longer than the same period on Mars. It also means that life may have had the potential ability to begin to thrive on Mars earlier than previously thought.

Now, we don’t know for certain if Mars did or did not, or does or does not have life…. but….

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/science/nasa-mars-rover-life.html

This weekend the New York Times carried a story of excited scientists unable to keep their mouths shut about Mars belching methane.

Last week, in an unexpected surge of gassiness, the air around the Mars Curiosity Rover surged with a wild 21 parts per billion of methane. While methane has previously been detected on mars, it’s never been measured in this amount, and this kind of a surge is crazy. According to team scientists speaking on their own, the rovers weekend plans were changed so that follow-up observations can be made, and folks will be pouring over data from Mars Express that was taken the same day. Dr Marco Giuranna is hoping to have preliminary results later this week, and there is a chance we could hear about this weekend’s measurements later today.

Now, if the idea of methane on mars making it into the New York Times sounds weird, let me explain. Methane is a molecule – CH4 – that breaks down in sunlight. This means that any methane we detect has to have been released recently. There are a couple primary mechanisms for making methane – life forms respirating or digesting with methane as an output, or geologic processes. Adding a twist, ice can trap methane, releasing it significantly later than when it was created. This means we are looking at 4 possible, a 3 exciting, possibilities. It could be current life, past life that left methane in ice. That would be AMAZING. It could also be a sign that Mars is currently geologically active – which would also be awesome, because that’s not what we think. Now… It could also be gas from past geologic activity – which we know happened – that is getting released from ice. That would be disappointing, but statistically may be most likely. I say ‘may’ because, honestly, we have NO IDEA how common life might be. It could be that life is so common that when we see methane, on Mars, Titan, or where ever, we need to just think – Oh, that’s life. We. Don’t. Know.

Here is to hoping we can find out in our lifetimes. There is a chance that the US and EU rovers scheduled to launch in 2020 will have a instruments that let us make progress answering these questions. For now… here is to hoping for more excited scientists leaking stories to the New York Times.

Join us tomorrow for more Daily Space news!