Is there life on Mars?

Somewhat disappointing news reaches us from the planet Mars, where NASA’s Curiosity Rover, having pootled around on the surface for the last year or so, taking samples and generally being curious, has reported back that it can’t find any methane.

Disappointing because it means that the chances of finding life on the Red Planet are vanishingly slim.

Red planet: Mars, yesterday

“It’s not a good sign,” Canadian astrobiologist Lyle Whyte told ABC News. “We have a problem.”

Hang on...

The last time anyone said that in a space-related context was when Apollo 13 blew a gasket and nearly blasted Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton into icy oblivion.

This sounds serious.

Meanwhile, even more disappointing news comes in from another corner of space. (Can space have corners? Ask your father.) Cosmologists say they are  confident that the earth will end in 1.75 billion years, when it finally gets swallowed up by the ever-aging, and ever-expanding, sun.

That’s if us uppity humans haven’t already blown up our home planet, or melted it, or swamped it with plastic pop bottles. And even if we haven’t, we’ll probably have evolved into telekinetic gasesous entities, and will be even less bothered than we appear to be now.

Every cloud, though, has a silver lining.

A third report, this time in  the New Scientist, is headlined “Death by Higgs rids cosmos of space brain threat.” If you understand that then you’re – well, the sort of person who understands headlines in the New Scientist.

But it can only be good news.

Methane delivery system

And the stuff about no methane on Mars is actually quite good news too, when you start to think about it. What makes methane? Cows. And if there’s no methane on Mars, then there are no cows either. And if there are no cows, then there won’t be any of those ghastly agricultural pongs that have been wafting across Bath for the last two weeks.

So when the sun starts expanding and the smell gets bad, we’ll know what to do. We’ll ride a trail of Higgs Bosons to the fourth rock from the Sun, settle down in odour-free bliss, and live out our days singing David Bowie songs. Sounds like a plan.

Weird tales from the red planet

 Things are going a bit pear-shaped up in space. Or on Mars, to be a little bit more precise.

NASA’s Curiosity Rover has been pootling around on the surface of the Red Planet since August last year, sieving soil, hammering rocks, drilling holes and brushing up the dust afterwards.

Looking dangerous: Mars Curiosity Rover

Not to mention taking some rather attractive panoramic holiday snaps of the surrounding landscape when it has a moment or two to itself.

Or at least it was until last Thursday, when it threw the interplanetary equivalent of a massive wobbly and stopped in its tracks.

Understandable, really: there is only so much DIY a 2,000lb six-wheeled scientific dune buggy can do without needing a sit-down and a cup of tea.

The boffins at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were having none of that. They logged straight into the computer systems on the stubborn little gizmo, worked out that there had been a crash, and put it into something called “safe mode”, which basically means that Curiosity stops all of its scientific investigations and sits there quietly waiting for someone back on Earth to work out what is wrong with it.

Weird or what?

Although it does make you wonder what would happen if they pushed the wrong button and accidentally sent it into dangerous mode.

 Wild parties with luscious five-legged Martian lovelies?

Drag races across the arid plains of Gale Crater against rolling balls of prickly, sentient Venusian tumbleweed?

Titanic pincer-to-pincer battles against malevolent crab-like fungoid entities from the dark planet Yuggoth?

Sounds like someone has been reading too many weird tales by HP Lovecraft. Or eating too much cheese before bedtime. Or indeed both.


Because putting a Mars Rover into safe mode is really no different from what all of us do when the computer fouls up.

The advice of endless magazines, of spotty lads in computer shops and of husbands who would rather be having a kip works for both, and really is the only solution: turn it off, and turn it back on again.