Commentary on an article by @sebastienviscardy.bsky.social, me and Kevin Zahnle arguing how Curiosity rover detections of methane are more likely methane contamination inside the rover than in the martian atmosphere.
bsky.app/profile/eos....

14.05.2025 02:55 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Questioning the Reliability of Methane Detections on Mars by the Curiosity Rover Methane levels in Curiosity's Tunable Laser Spectrometer foreoptics chamber are 3–4 orders of magnitude higher than in the sample cell Using a diffusion model, we propose a leakage scenario from ...

Recent papers from coworkers & me:
1) Doubt that CH4 detections on Mars are really from its atmosphere. Viscardy, Catling, Zahnle '25: doi.org/10.1029/2024...

2) Enceladus plume particles will partially form glass, preserving organics better than crystals: Klenner+ '25 dx.doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/...

28.04.2025 19:18 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

my book, “Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction” is now published in Chinese and available to 1.2B people for whom Chinese is a 1st or 2nd language (1st Ed with updates, Yilin Press, Nanjing). Coming soon: 2nd Ed. (OUP) in English in 2026/7, with updates on planetary science, origin of life, etc.

28.04.2025 19:07 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Origin of biological homochirality by crystallization of an RNA precursor on a magnetic surface Homochirality was achieved by the spin-selective crystallization of a racemic RNA precursor on a magnetite surface.

My 2 cents: The CISS effect (chirality induced spin selectivity) is the best answer to date. It empirically produces homochirality in biologically-relevant molecules unlike previous ideas with little/no feasibility. Underlying theory of CISS remains TBD. See, e.g., www.science.org/doi/full/10....

28.04.2025 18:27 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

At the same time, Dirac saw defining what exactly is a measurement and what exactly is associated collapse as difficult problems that future theory needed to resolve and perhaps turn into quite different problems. I’ll happily defer to Dirac.

25.04.2025 18:59 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I was educated with the Bohr interpretation that an observation is the interaction of a quantum phenomenon (e.g. an electron) with a classical apparatus, which doesn’t require a conscious observer. The quantum measurement ends when macroscopically recorded, which doesn’t require a mind.

25.04.2025 18:55 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

I’m having trouble seeing how your examples, Ray, are qualitatively different from Schrödinger’s Cat & its various proposed solutions. This is a problem from 90 years ago.

24.04.2025 20:10 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Unusual ‘soda lakes’ may have kick-started life on Earth by concentrating key compounds Phosphorus leached from volcanic rocks in warm waters could have triggered reactions needed to launch biochemistry

Research by my colleagues and me (and others) covered in Science this week. www.science.org/content/arti...

25.02.2025 19:47 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Haas, Tutolo & Catling 2025. A phosphorus budget of soda lakes finds major biological sinks, implying abundant phosphate-availability at the origin of life.

My group's most recent paper: We quantified phosphorus fluxes in soda lakes, showing that without biology, soda lakes worldwide would have phosphate levels suitable for prebiotic synthesis of RNA. This answers a 70-year-old “phosphate problem of the origin of life”
doi.org/10.1016/j.gc...

17.02.2025 03:24 — 👍 6    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 1