Mars, the red planet, is humming. The source of this alien music remains unknown as the quiet, constant drone periodically pulses with the beat of quakes rippling around the planet. Does this mean that there is life on Mars?
This Martian hum is described in five studies just recently in Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications. It was NASA's Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, which detected seismic activity and ground vibration in the planet.
Since 1976, the InSight mission has only been NASA's eighth successful landing in Mars. On November 26, 2018, NASA's InSight mission landed in Elysium Planitia. InSight is used to develop a thorough understanding of the differentiation and subsequent thermal evolution of Mars that affects its surface geology and volatile process using information gathered by the InSight such as its interior structure, composition, and thermal state.
"It's such a relief to finally be able to stand up and shout, look at all this great stuff we're seeing," says principal investigator of the InSight mission, Bruce Banerdt.
Suzanne Smrekar, the deputy principal investigator of the Insight Mission said that one cannot make a model just from Earth but rather, more data points are still needed. "It's just super exciting that we some of these things, and that we are trying to understand Mars," she added.
Recording these movements could help scientists answer many questions that have remained unanswered for many decades now. Nicholas Schmerr, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland ponders on the question of life on Mars, "Can it support life, or did it ever? Life exists at the edge, where the equilibrium is off."
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