Organic material found on Mars

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uclaLabrat

Diamond Member
Aug 2, 2007
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The martian atmosphere is 96% CO2, and about 0.1% O2 so there is a lot of oxygen on mars, it is all just already bound. But O2 breaks down under UV, so there must be some O2 sink on Mars?
It sounds like at one point there was more O2 on mars than now. I think the oxygen sink is CO2; UV light could be photolyzing oxygen and causing it to oxidize the methane to CO2. If that were the case, I would expect a significant amount of water vapor as a by product. Not sure if that's the case