A 1,000-mile cloud on Mars may reveal physics never seen in nature
A new model suggests Mars may host ice-forming physics never directly observed before.
A new model suggests Mars may host ice-forming physics never directly observed before.
The short version
- Every morning during the Martian spring and summer, a thin and extremely long cloud emerges, only to disappear again.
- The wispy formation appears near the volcano Arsia Mons and gradually elongates until it reaches over 1,000 miles—about the distance from New York to Kansas City as the crow flies—before dissipating.
- This cycle then repeats for several months.
What happened
Since it was first recorded by a probe in 2018, scientists have been unable to find a plausible explanation for the existence of this cloud, often referred to as the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC). Recently, researchers successfully modeled the cloud’s formation for the first time, their results suggesting that it may be driven by a physical process that has never been directly observed in any planet’s atmosphere.
Why it matters
“We found that we needed to include some exotic physics… physics that, while included in textbooks, is treated as theoretical and usually thought not to happen in nature.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.