Is it possible for hydrocarbon based substances to form on Mars?
Mars once had abundant in water and probably abundant life and vegetation. It is also safe to assume that it had a lot of microbial life in it’s water bodies.
Given the video below, would it be possible for oil and natural gas to have formed on Mars? There are areas on Mars where there is a lot of methane detected. It is not certain if this is the result of active micro organisms or perhaps trapped methane in the ground, otherwise known as natural gas.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PAuBD-_HvUE
Of course if one had the advanced energy systems to get to Mars and back, why would they want to exploit an antiquated source of energy such as hydrocarbons once they got there?
Brian Ghilliotti
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Mars died too quickly for there to be the abundance of the ocean life that formed like it did on Earth to form the oil and natural gas deposits. Contrary to what everyone says, it isn’t dead dinosaurs that made the crude oil. It was billions of tonnes and tonnes of small marine plants and animals that thrived for millions of years before there were dinosaurs. They died en-mass and created the deposits of oil we are currently drilling out of the Earth. They are pretty sure there was never a long lasting development of enough plants and animals on Mars that would have been required for the fossil fuels to form. Traces of them wouldn’t be so hard to find if there were. (The video calls this a Saturated Environment) Here’s a good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvH-h7TzSsE
Also, we don’t use petroleum hydrocarbons for space travel. (kerosene has been used in the past, but it is not necessary) Liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen is enough. The fuel they need to find is water. H2O.
If, somehow, Mars did have a ‘Saturated Environment’ at some stage during its history, the changes that happened on the surface of Mars don’t appear to have occurred like on Earth, where layers were able to build up. Mars cooled and lost its atmosphere.
If , by the extremely rare chance they are found, the use of fossil fuels on Mars is completely impractical. To burn coal or gas, you use up oxygen. There is no oxygen on Mars, so you’d be using a resource that would have to be brought with for us to breathe, and be even more rare, to burn a fossil fuel that would be extremely limited, if it exists at all. To power anything on Mars, initially, it will have to be solar. The sinking of geothermal wells might happen, but to power the drill initially, it will run on solar.
If you want to look at what they are considering as a practical and available source of fuel on Mars it could be Magnesium and Carbon Dioxide. (sorry it’s a scientific paper, but that’s how I roll) Here: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/3.23609?journalCode=jpp
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