Over the past decade, the Curiosity rover has repeatedly detected methane on the surface of Mars. This gas is often produced by microbes, so it could herald the presence of life on the red planet. But skeptics have postulated that the gas detected by Curiosity could have a much more pedestrian origin.
In an article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, Sébastien Viscardy and colleagues suggest the methane could be coming from inside the Curiosity rover itself rather than from the atmosphere of Mars. They propose an experiment that could differentiate between microbes and a technological source.
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