What does the article talk about?
Hi everyone,

I am really confused about the last sentence of this article. "What nomad does seem to show is that, if methane ..."
Here's the link: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/12/22/new-results-suggest-there-is-no-methane-on-mars

What attitude is it?
Does it support the optimists that there is methane on Mars?
or
does it support Nomad itself that holds the opposite view?

As far as l understand, the optimists say Nomad could only probe upper parts of the atmosphere, so it means that they think methane is in the lower parts of the atmosphere. But nomad says methane is limited to low levels of the air and it makes me feel that nomad acknowledge it didn't probe the lower parts of the Mars' atmosphere, which contains some methane.

This really confuses me since my reading ability isn't good enough. Thanks for any help.

Question

What does the article talk about?
Hi everyone,

I am really confused about the last sentence of this article.  "What nomad does seem to show is that, if methane ..."
Here's the link:  https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/12/22/new-results-suggest-there-is-no-methane-on-mars

What attitude is it? 
Does it support the optimists that there is methane on Mars?
or
does it support Nomad itself that holds the opposite view?

As far as l understand, the optimists say Nomad could only probe upper parts of the atmosphere, so it means that they think methane is in the lower parts of the atmosphere. But nomad says methane is limited to low levels of the air and it makes me feel that nomad acknowledge it didn't probe the lower parts of the Mars' atmosphere, which contains some methane.

This really confuses me since my reading ability isn't good enough. Thanks for any help.

Answer

The point of the last sentence, I think, is that (i) so far, the NOMAD experiment has not revealed any traces of methane in the atmosphere, which is bad news for “optimists” who hope for signs of life on Mars, but (ii) the optimists are still clinging to hope, and are making excuses for NOMAD’s failure to detect methane (e.g., by noting that NOMAD can only observe the upper atmosphere).  The overall sense is that the optimists are reluctant to accept the results of the NOMAD experiment because they want the answer to be “yes, there is life on Mars.”

Answers · 1

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