While much of Mars looks like the deserts of Utah, the Martian South Polar regions have revealed some surprising geology unlike anything we have here on Earth.
At the 2007 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Chris Okubo, Candace Hansen, and Timothy Titus who work with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Camera presented research suggesting that these intriguing structures are caused by explosions of subliming carbon dioxide.
The theory is that there is a layer of translucent Carbon Dioxide ice and when the surface is heated during the summer months, the ground beneath the ice heats up vaporizing the Carbon Dioxide gas. This gas flows uphill and bursts out of weak spots in the ice. This results in geysers which spew Carbon Dioxide gas and Martian dust into the atmosphere. The gas refreezes and snows out forming the white material along the spider-shaped network of tunnels blown out by the subliming Carbon Dioxide.
This same process is believed to be responsible for similar more extensive landscapes called lacework and lizard skin. It would be fascinating to see these from the ground.
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
Posted under Astronomy, Exploration, Mars, Space
