Global storms hurl dust towers into the Martian sky

June 13, 2021 0 Comments

No other planet in our Solar System has inspired the human imagination more than Mars. This is because, historically, the Red Planet was considered the world most likely to be the distant home of life beyond Earth. While this viewpoint has certainly become very outdated, Mars still attracts earthlings with its rusty red surface, etched with small valleys carved into slopes, which are eerily similar in shape to ravines formed by flowing water. on the surface of our own planet. and where liquid water exists, life as we know it can also exist. But today, Mars is a cold and dry wasteland, where violent dust storms are common, but about every ten years something unpredictable happens and a series of uncontrolled storms erupt that cover the entire planet in a dense layer of eddies. dust. In November 2019, planetary scientists announced that a fleet of NASA spacecraft got a good look at the life cycle of the huge and highly destructive 2018 global dust storm that prematurely ended the visiting rover. Chance exploration mission on the surface of the Red Planet.

Right now, planetary scientists are still in the process of studying the puzzling new data. However, two articles have recently been published that shed new light on a phenomenon that occurs within the huge dust storm:dust towers, which are concentrated clouds of dust that heat up in sunlight and then rise into the air. Planetary scientists have proposed that water vapor, trapped in dense, swirling dust, can drive them in a way that has been likened to an elevator into space, where radiation from our Sun rips apart its molecules. This suggestion could help explain how Martian water faded over billions of years.

Our Solar System is approximately 4.6 billion years old. Before about 3.8 billion years ago, Mars may have had a much denser atmosphere than it does today, as well as higher surface temperatures. These ancient conditions would have allowed vast amounts of liquid water to exist on the Martian surface, including a large ocean that covers a third of the planet.

Most of the water on Mars today is in the form of ice, although some of it also exists as water vapor in its atmosphere. The only place where water ice is visible on the Martian surface is in the North Pole Ice Sheet. However, there is also a large amount of water ice under the permanent carbon dioxide ice sheet at the Martian south pole, as well as in the shallow subsurface in more temperate conditions.

More than 21 million kilometers of ice have been discovered on or near the Martian surface. This equates to enough ice water to cover the entire planet at a depth of 115 feet. Water ice is even more likely to lurk deep beneath the Martian subsurface.

Large amounts of dust have formed on the surface of the Red planet as a result of its current dry conditions. Dust towers They are huge, churning clouds that rise considerably higher than the normal background in the thin Martian atmosphere. Even if dust towers They have also been seen in more normal conditions, they seem to form in greater numbers as a result of global storms.

TO tower forms for the first time on the surface of a planet. It begins as a region of rapidly rising dust that is roughly as wide as Rhode Island. By the time this dusty tower reaches the lofty 50-mile height, as observed during the infamous 2018 global dust storm, it may be as wide as the state of Nevada. As the tower begins to lose strength, it can form a layer of dust 35 miles above the surface of a planet that may be wider than the entire continental United States.

The 2019 finds, belonging to the exotic Martian dust towers, were derived courtesy of NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which is run by the agency Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) located in Pasadena, California. Even though dust storms cover the Martian surface, MRO is able to use its heat sensor Mars climate probe instrument to penetrate the dense mist. The instrument is specifically designed to measure dust levels. Its data, along with images obtained from a camera aboard the orbiter called the Mars Contextual Image Generator (MARC), allowed planetary scientists to detect numerous dust towers.

The kingdom of the Red planet

Mars is the fourth planet from our Sun, as well as the second smallest major planet in our Sun family after Mercury. In English, Mars gets its name from the Roman god of war because of its rusty red hue. This reddish coloration comes from the large amounts of iron oxide on the Martian surface, and is unique among astronomical bodies visible to the unaided human eye. Mars is a solid terrestrial planet, showing only a fine atmosphere. It also has surface features reminiscent of both the impact craters on Earth’s Moon and Earth’s polar caps, valleys, and deserts.

Martian days and seasons are also comparable to those of our own planet. This is because the period of rotation and the inclination of the axis of rotation with respect to the plane of the ecliptic are similar for both sister worlds. Mars also harbors Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and the highest known mountain in our entire Solar System. Another feature of the surface, called Valles Marineris, it is one of the largest canyons in our Sun’s family of planets, moons, and smaller objects. Borealis The basin, located in the northern hemisphere of Mars, covers 40% of the planet and is believed to be a gigantic impact scar left by a huge crashing object. Mars is also surrounded by a duo of tiny moons, Phobos Y Deimos, which are irregularly shaped and resemble potatoes. The two small moons are considered captured asteroids.

The first observations of Mars were made by sky watchers from ancient Egypt. In 1534 a. C., these first astronomers were already familiar with the retrograde motion of the Red Planet. By the time of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Babylonian sky watchers were making regular records of the positions of the planets, as well as systematic studies of their behavior. In the case of the Red Planet, ancient astronomers discovered that it performed 42 circuits of the zodiac every 79 years. These ancient astronomers even devised mathematical methods to make small corrections with respect to the predicted positions of the planets in our Solar System. Ancient sky watchers called the planets “wandering stars.”

In the IV century a. C., the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle pointed out that Mars disappeared behind the Earth’s Moon during an occultation. This indicated that the Red Planet was further from Earth than our Moon. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, tried to determine the orbital motion of Mars, and his collective works and his model on astronomy were featured in his multi-volume collection, under the title Almagest. Tea Almagest it was the authoritative work on western astronomy for the next four centuries.

Ancient Chinese astronomers were also familiar with Mars no later than the 4th century BC. C. In the 5th century AD, the Indian astronomical work entitled Surya siddhanta presented a measure of the estimated diameter of the Red Planet. In East Asian cultures, Mars is often referred to as a “fiery star,” according to the Five elements: wood, water, earth, metal and fire.

In the 17th century, astronomer Tycho Brahe measured the daytime parallax of Mars that Johannes Kepler had used to make the first calculations of the distance from Mars to Earth. When the first telescopes, used for astronomical purposes, became available, the diurnal parallax of Mars was determined to make this measurement in 1692. However, these early measurements were flawed due to the poor quality of the telescopes.

Mars hasn’t always looked the way we see it today. The Red Planet suffered a catastrophic fall billions of years ago. Before this tilt occurred, the Martian poles were not located where they are now.

There is current research evaluating the potential for past habitability of the Red Planet, as well as the possibility of existing life. Future astrobiology missions are currently being planned. These missions include the March 2020 Y Rosalind franklin rovers. Today, liquid water cannot accumulate on the Martian surface, except at lower elevations for short periods, due to low atmospheric pressure, which is less than 1% of that on Earth.

Dozens of unmanned spacecraft, including rovers, orbiters, and landers, have been sent to Mars by the United States, Europe, India, and the Soviet Union. These missions looked at the surface, climate, and geology of the Red Planet. For the past twenty years, cameras in orbit around Mars have sent a cornucopia of tell-tale images of the “fiery star” to our planet.

Dust towers in the Martian sky

Even if dust towers forms throughout the Martian year, MRO observed something unusual about the catastrophic 2018 global dust storm. “Normally, the dust would fall within a day or two. But during a global storm, dust towers they are continually renewed for weeks, “commented the article’s lead author, Dr. Nicholas Heavens, on November 26, 2019. JPL press release. Dr. Heavens is from Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia.

In some cases, several towers they have been observed for almost 4 weeks.

The dust activity rate surprised Dr. Heavens and his colleagues. But what they found particularly intriguing was the possibility that dust towers they function as “space elevators” for other materials. If this turns out to be the case, then dust towers it can play the important role of transporting other materials through the Martian atmosphere. When dust in the air is heated, it forms updrafts that carry gases during travel, including small amounts of water vapor that are sometimes seen as wispy clouds on Mars.

In a previous article, Dr. Heavens had shown that during a global Martian dust storm in 2007, water molecules were launched high into the upper atmosphere, where radiation from our Sun could break them down into particles that escape screaming toward interplanetary space. That mechanism could provide an important clue to how the Red Planet lost its lakes and rivers billions of years ago, thus becoming the frozen and desolate wasteland it is today.

Planetary scientists aren’t sure how global dust storms form. This is because so far they have only managed to study fewer than a dozen of these storms. But with more time to collect additional data, the MRO The team will seek a new understanding of how dust towers they form within global storms and what role they can play in removing water from the Martian atmosphere.

Dr. David Kass, Climate Sounder Scientist at JPLhe told reporters that “global dust storms are really rare. We really don’t have anything like this on Earth, where the climate of the entire planet changes for several months.”

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