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Using images captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, researchers have created a cloud atlas of Mars, to better understand the climate of the Red Planet
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Tag: Mars
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Cloud atlas of Mars reveals an atmosphere unlike our own
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Strange meteorites have been traced to their source craters on Mars
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An impact crater on Mars, with darker material exposed beneath the reddish dust
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Six Martian meteorites have been traced back to the craters they were ejected from on Mars millions of years ago. Finding the original sources of these alien rocks will allow us to place them in context, yielding insights about the history of the Red Planet.
“Being able to identify the impact launch sites for any Martian meteorites has been a challenging goal for a long time,” says Hap McSween at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who wasn’t involved in this work. “There have been numerous published attempts before, but none have been very convincing until now.”
When a rock smashes into Mars or another planet, it causes a spray of debris, some of which can float away through space and eventually hit Earth as a meteorite. Anthony Lagain at Curtin University in Australia and his colleagues used a sophisticated model that matches what we know about the ages of the millions of Martian craters and of the six meteorites that were chipped off the planet’s surface.
“On Mars, you’ve got about 80,000 craters larger than 3 kilometres, so about 80,000 craters that might be the source of these meteorites,” says Lagain. The researchers’ model narrowed this down to about 20 possible sources. Then, they studied the structure of the rocks to find out how much force they had been suddenly subjected to when they were blasted into space, feeding that into another model of the craters themselves. This led them to the original sources of the meteorites and how deep they were probably buried before the impacts that sent them to Earth.
The meteorites are all igneous rocks, meaning they are pieces of solidified lava. Pete Mouginis-Mark at University of Hawai’i at Mānoa says that while there are some questions about whether the properties of the lava flows in these craters completely match the meteorites, if these craters are truly the sources of the rocks, we can learn a great deal about Martian volcanic activity from them.
In particular, two of the meteorites that seem to have come from the same crater imply that the area was volcanically active for longer than was previously thought to be likely. “We will have to rethink what we believe to be the internal ‘plumbing system’ of volcanoes on Mars and how they can stay molten for these extended periods of time,” says Mouginis-Mark.
There are only about 200 known Martian meteorites on Earth and they are the only Mars rocks that researchers can examine in detail. NASA’s planned mission to bring back samples directly from Mars is facing serious issues that may lead to its significant delay, so these rocks might be our only chance to study Martian material in state-of-the-art laboratories for a long time. “Here, we’ve got six Martian meteorites coming from five places, so it’s like five sample return missions that you get for free,” says Lagain. Studying these samples further could not only teach us about the evolution of Mars, but also help guide future exploration to the most scientifically interesting spots on the surface.
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How to See the Conjunction Between Mars, Jupiter, and the Moon
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This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
August has delivered many spectacular sights in the night sky: a supermoon, meteor showers, and supercharged auroras. Mars and Jupiter also currently appear unusually close together in the night sky, in what’s known as a conjunction. They appeared closest during the early morning of August 14 and are now gradually moving apart, and won’t be this close again in the sky until 2033.
But while they are still close, at the end of the month—on August 27—they’ll be joined by a third protagonist, the moon, producing a rare triple conjunction of the three bodies close together. The moon will be in its crescent phase, and according to the constellation-tracking app Star Walk, will be 40 percent illuminated. This decrease in brightness will make it possible to see the red dot of Mars and the larger star Jupiter next to it.
It isn’t necessary to have telescopes or binoculars to enjoy the conjunction, although it’s essential to be in a place away from light pollution. Photographers with experience viewing astronomical events recommend going to a high place to view the phenomenon, such as a mountain or the roof of a house—but if you do, make sure you are well sheltered and protected from the cold.
NASA indicates that the triangle between the moon, Mars, and Jupiter will be visible to the west, one hour before sunrise. If a viewer uses advanced observing instruments, they will also be able to see the red-giant stars Aldebaran above the triangle and Betelgeuse below in the northern hemisphere.
Distinguishing Between Planets and Stars
Although they may look similar in the sky, planets and stars do not behave the same way. Stars maintain a fixed position that changes according only to the season of the year. The planets, on the other hand, move throughout the night along a line known as an ecliptic. In addition, the stars twinkle or appear to vary in brightness, while the planets maintain a constant luminosity.
Only five planets can be seen with the naked eye from Earth: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Each body appears regularly in the sky, but because they move at different speeds and their distance from Earth varies, they have unique behaviors at night. For example, Mercury and Venus can be seen only at dusk or dawn, while Mars or Jupiter shine throughout the night.
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We could use glitter-like iron rods to help Mars support life
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Terraforming Mars would make the planet more like Earth and better able to sustain life as we know it
DETLEV VAN RAVENSWAAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Releasing glitter-sized iron rods into Mars’s atmosphere could warm the planet enough to melt water and support microbial life.
Making the surface of the Red Planet suitable for Earth life, a process called terraforming, would be a complex process, but a crucial part of this is raising its surface temperature above its current frosty median level of -65°C (-85°F).
Some people have suggested installing mirrors above Mars’s surface or pumping methane into its atmosphere, but these ideas are difficult to implement because the raw materials required would need to be sent from Earth.
Now, Edwin Kite at the University of Chicago in Illinois and his colleagues have found that relatively small dust clouds made from iron or aluminium rods – each about 9 micrometres long and 160 nanometres across – mined from rocks on Mars, could warm the planet by about 30°C in a period of a few months or over a decade, depending on how quickly the particles are released.
These rods would each be about 9 micrometres long and 160 nanometres across. They could be carried by wind up from the surface to the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere, where they would then remain for around a decade, trapping heat from the surface and allowing sunlight through.
Kite and his colleagues modelled how the rods responded to light and then fed this information into climate simulations, which showed that the increase in temperature and pressure would be enough for parts of Mars to sustain liquid water, and potentially oxygen-producing bacteria.
They also found that this warming would only need the rods to be released at a rate of water flowing through about 30 garden sprinklers, equivalent to a total of 700,000 cubic metres of metal per year to achieve the required warming, or around 1 per cent of Earth’s total metal production.
“When we did the calculation, we found a surprisingly small amount of engineered dust would be required, much less than if you wanted the same amount of warming with engineered greenhouse gases,” says Kite.
Although it would still be challenging to mine from Mars’s surface, this works out at 5000 times more efficient than any previously suggested warming method, says Kite.
One large uncertainty in the simulations is how the tiny rods might interact with water in Mars’s atmosphere, which could cause unintended effects like water clumping around the dust and falling back to the surface as rain, reducing the warming.
It is an interesting idea and might work if the particles stay in the atmosphere for long enough, says Manoj Joshi at the University of East Anglia, UK. But even with the low requirements for the amount of metal needed, it is still a huge manufacturing effort, he says.
There are also ethical questions around whether we should alter the atmosphere of another planet, says Joshi. “The deep surface of Mars is still barely explored; we don’t know anything about it. Should we really be altering a planet in this manner?”
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Could Mars become habitable with the help of glitter-like iron rods?
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Terraforming Mars would make the planet more like Earth and better able to sustain life as we know it
DETLEV VAN RAVENSWAAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Releasing glitter-sized iron rods into Mars’s atmosphere could warm the planet enough to melt water and support microbial life.
Making the surface of the Red Planet suitable for Earth life, a process called terraforming, would be a complex process, but a crucial part of this is raising its surface temperature above its current frosty median level of -65°C (-85°F).
Some people have suggested installing mirrors above Mars’s surface or pumping methane into its atmosphere, but these ideas are difficult to implement because the raw materials required would need to be sent from Earth.
Now, Edwin Kite at the University of Chicago in Illinois and his colleagues have found that relatively small dust clouds made from iron or aluminium rods – each about 9 micrometres long and 160 nanometres across – mined from rocks on Mars, could warm the planet by about 30°C in a period of a few months or over a decade, depending on how quickly the particles are released.
These rods would each be about 9 micrometres long and 160 nanometres across. They could be carried by wind up from the surface to the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere, where they would then remain for around a decade, trapping heat from the surface and allowing sunlight through.
Kite and his colleagues modelled how the rods responded to light and then fed this information into climate simulations, which showed that the increase in temperature and pressure would be enough for parts of Mars to sustain liquid water, and potentially oxygen-producing bacteria.
They also found that this warming would only need the rods to be released at a rate of water flowing through about 30 garden sprinklers, equivalent to a total of 700,000 cubic metres of metal per year to achieve the required warming, or around 1 per cent of Earth’s total metal production.
“When we did the calculation, we found a surprisingly small amount of engineered dust would be required, much less than if you wanted the same amount of warming with engineered greenhouse gases,” says Kite.
Although it would still be challenging to mine from Mars’s surface, this works out at 5000 times more efficient than any previously suggested warming method, says Kite.
One large uncertainty in the simulations is how the tiny rods might interact with water in Mars’s atmosphere, which could cause unintended effects like water clumping around the dust and falling back to the surface as rain, reducing the warming.
It is an interesting idea and might work if the particles stay in the atmosphere for long enough, says Manoj Joshi at the University of East Anglia, UK. But even with the low requirements for the amount of metal needed, it is still a huge manufacturing effort, he says.
There are also ethical questions around whether we should alter the atmosphere of another planet, says Joshi. “The deep surface of Mars is still barely explored; we don’t know anything about it. Should we really be altering a planet in this manner?”
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A new title from James S. A. Corey is one of the best new sci-fi books of August 2024
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Whether it’s black orbs swallowing people in downtown Seoul, murder on Mars or malevolent pigs, August has got science fiction fans covered. There are new titles from big names such as James S. A. Corey, Josh Malerman and Neal Asher, and an intriguing-sounding short story collection from Mark Haddon (he of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time fame). I will be kicking off my August reading with Janina Matthewson’s story of the apocalypse experienced from a small island, followed up with Miles Cameron’s vision of a universe traversed by city-sized “Greatships”. Whatever your favourite genre of sci-fi, there’s lots to choose from and enjoy.
This speculative novel opens in downtown Seoul, where a huge black orb suddenly appears and sucks Jeong-su’s neighbour inside. As it continues to consume people, attempts to stop it fail and it begins to split and multiply, causing global panic. Jeong-su, meanwhile, sets out to find his elderly parents.
The Horses by Janina Matthewson
This story of the apocalypse takes place in the small island community of Black Crag, where Sarah wakes one morning to find that the rest of the world appears to have gone silent. No aeroplanes cross the sky and the radios are quiet. When a silent, traumatised ferryman arrives, whispers about what really happened on the mainland begin to divide the villagers. This is being compared to Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven – one of my favourite post-apocalyptic novels.
This is a standalone novel set within Asher’s Owner universe. Earth is governed by a “ruthless Committee”, but when rebel and mutant Ottanger is experimented on by Earth’s Inspectorate, he discovers he can reach alternate worlds and meets an evolved human from the far future. Can he destroy the Committee’s regime?
This sounds a lot of fun – a generation-spanning sci-fi story moving from Mars in 2034, when the first human is born on the Red Planet, to Mars in 2103, now a place of division and fear.
Murder takes place on Mars in Sam Wilson’s new science fiction novel
Malp /Alamy
Pearl by Josh Malerman
The bestselling author of the terrifying Birdbox sets his latest slice of horror on a farm inhabited by Pearl, a “strangely malevolent pig”, and her owner Walter Kopple. Walter has always been afraid of Pearl, and as rumours swirl in town, madness begins to grip the locals.
This slice of military science fiction is the sequel to Cameron’s Artifact Space, which I haven’t read, but now I want to read them both as they sound tons of fun. They’re set in a world where Greatships, with city-sized crews, transport goods across space and trade for “xenoglas” with an alien species. Marca Nbaro has always wanted to serve aboard one of them, and now she is, but something is targeting the ships in the darkness of space.
New Scientist book club
Love reading? Come and join our friendly group of fellow book lovers. Every six weeks, we delve into an exciting new title, with members given free access to extracts from our books, articles from our authors and video interviews.
This debut introduces us to Raffi, a physicist who dreams of parallel universes, and who is falling for a sculptor named Britt in this one. If only Raffi had been brave enough to say hello to Britt when they were children – but what if they had? The question sees Raffi catapulted across strange alternative universes, yet everything eventually leads them back to Britt.
This is a collection of short stories weaving ancient Greek myth with the modern world to explore genetics, how we treat animals and more. So the Minotaur, for example, becomes a story of maternal love and the patriarchy. I’m looking forward to this – Haddon is reliably excellent.
The bestselling authors of The Expanse series of novels, who write under a joint pen name, have released a new space opera that sees the empire of the Carryx descend on an isolated human world of Anjiin, where the population is slaughtered or abducted as prisoners. Dafyd, a scientist’s assistant, is captured with his team – but can his skills help them escape their captors’ agenda?
The punning title sets the scene for this comic story of an alien invasion in the town of Muddy Gap. Pie lover Denver Bryant sees a UFO explode, but they appear to be the only person who cares. As they document the incident and their investigations on their pie blog, the only person who takes them seriously is the handsome new bartender, Ezra.
Biohackers Charlie and Parker live in a near-future version of London, one where the climate has collapsed. It is a world split into three groups: Greens, who are still trying to save it; Blues, who are out for profit while they can get it; and Blacks, who see no hope. When the pair are hired by Green activists for jobs ranging from robbery to murder, Charlie isn’t keen, but Parker wants to accept, believing they can still make a difference.
This debut short story collection about Central American identity moves from past to future worlds as it explores what we would do if we woke to find our lives were unrecognisable. It is peopled with characters from mango farmers to cyborgs and promises to take on everything from “menacing technology” to “unchecked bureaucracy”.
Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides in Dune 2
Courtesy of Warner Bros
Not quite science fiction, this last one, but it’s the kind of thing I love, and so I wanted to mention it in case you do too. It does what it says on the tin, basically – collects quotes from four centuries’ worth of sci-fi, from Isaac Asimov’s “Better to make a good future than predict a bad one” (Prelude to Foundation, 1988) to Frank Herbert’s “Hope clouds observation.” (Dune, 1965).
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The largest volcanoes on Mars have frosted tips during winter
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A view of frost on Olympus Mons
ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
As winter mornings dawn on Mars, the tips of its largest volcanoes become covered in frost, in yet another example of water on the Red Planet.
We already know that Mars has significant deposits of ice in the form of polar ice caps, and possibly buried underneath the surface at the equator, but scientists had yet to observe surface water in other Martian regions.
Now, Adomas Valantinas at Brown University in Rhode Island and his colleagues have spotted frost that appears to only form in the morning, during Martian winters, near the peaks of volcanoes in the Tharsis region, which includes some of the solar system’s largest volcanoes, such as Olympus Mons. “This is quite exciting because it tells you how dynamic Mars’s water system is, but also how water can be found in different amounts basically everywhere on Mars,” says Valantinas.
He and his team took morning pictures of the icy volcanic peaks using a colour camera aboard the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter, which studies the Martian atmosphere, and spotted wide regions of blue frost. They ruled out frozen carbon dioxide, which can look similar, as the cause by calculating the surface temperatures and finding it was too warm for CO2 to freeze.
Though there is a possibility the ice is formed from gases coming out of the volcano, Valantinas and his team would it expect to see it all year round if this was the case. Instead, the fact that it only appears during the colder parts of the year, makes it more likely the frost is a result of water vapour in the atmosphere freezing out.
Knowing where ice forms on the Martian surface, especially from atmospheric processes, is vital for accurate weather prediction, says Susan Conway at the University of Nantes, France. We know that ice from the poles moves into the atmosphere, but we don’t know where it goes, she says. “This is a really neat observation, because we can actually see where it’s going.”
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What would happen if we pulled out Mars’s iron core with a magnet?
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Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from snapping the moon in half to causing a gravitational wave apocalypse – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare. Listen on Apple, Spotify or on our podcast page.
Feelings about Mars run strong in the planetary science community – many love it because of how much we know about it, while others resent the overwhelming attention it has received at the expense of other worlds in our solar system. But in this episode of Dead Planets Society, sentiment does not get in the way of the central goal: absolutely wrecking the Red Planet.
In this episode, Mars’s very redness may prove its demise. The red hue of Martian soil comes from iron oxide, and iron’s magnetic properties inspired our hosts, Chelsea Whyte and Leah Crane, to explore the possibility of destroying Mars with huge orbiting magnets.
Iron oxide itself is not magnetic, but Mars does have a core of liquid iron. Our hosts are joined this episode by volcanologist Robin George Andrews to consider how a giant magnet would affect this core.
Depending on the orbit of the huge magnet, the core could be simply disturbed so much that it would slosh around, causing fissures and volcanism and maybe eventually the complete disintegration of the planet. Or it could be pulled from deep underground through pre-existing vents, like those at the top of the huge Martian volcano Olympus Mons.
When it reaches space, the liquid iron would freeze into a glittering metallic statue. Much of it might accumulate on the magnet itself, turning it into a sort of enormous iron-shielded bullet hurtling through the solar system.
In the process, Mars would be left hollow. This alone would be a serious problem for the planet, leading to the outer layers crunching and grinding together to fill the empty space. Or the space could be filled with something else – the possibilities are endless and potentially truly disturbing.
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Mars is blasting plasma out of its atmosphere into space
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The Red Planet launches large bursts of plasma into space from its upper atmosphere, much like the sun’s coronal mass ejections, despite not having a global magnetic field
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Elon Musk’s Latest Mars Pitch Has Potential
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Elon Musk has been talking publicly about his sweeping vision for Mars settlement for nearly eight years now, dating to a speech in Guadalajara, Mexico, in September 2016.
This weekend, at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, Musk once again took up the mantle of his “making life multiplanetary” cause. Addressing employees at the location of the company’s Starship factory, Musk spoke about the “high urgency” needed to extend the “light of consciousness” beyond Earth. That is not because humanity’s home planet is a lost cause or should not be preserved. Rather, Musk said, he does not want humanity to remain a one-planet civilization that will, inevitably, face some calamity that will end the species.
All of this is fairly familiar territory for spaceflight enthusiasts—and observers of Musk. But during the past eight years he has become an increasingly controversial and polarizing figure. Based on his behavior, many people will dismiss Musk’s Mars comments as those of a megalomaniac. At least in regard to spaceflight, however, that would be wrong. Musk’s multiplanetary ambitions today are more credible because SpaceX has taken steps toward doing what he said the company would do.
SpaceX has real hardware today and has completed three test flights. A fourth is possible next month.
“It’s surreal, but it’s real,” Musk said this weekend, describing the audacious Mars vision.
The Booster and Ship
As part of his 45-minute speech, Musk spoke about the booster for Starship, the upper stage, and the company’s plans to ultimately deliver millions of tons of cargo to Mars for a self-sustaining civilization.
If thousands of launches seem impossible, Musk noted that SpaceX has completed 327 successful Falcon launches and that 80 percent of those have involved used boosters. This year, he said, SpaceX will launch about 90 percent of the mass sent into orbit from the planet. China will launch about 6 percent, he added, with the remainder of the world accounting for the other 4 percent.
This kind of performance has given Musk confidence that reusability can be achieved with the Super Heavy booster that powers Starship. On the vehicle’s next test flight, possibly in May, the company will attempt to land the booster on a virtual tower in the Gulf of Mexico. If that landing is precise enough, SpaceX will try to catch the booster on the fifth test flight with the chopstick-like mechanisms on Starship’s massive launch tower.
“That’s very much a success-oriented schedule, but it is within the realm of possibility,” Musk said. With multiple test flights occurring this year, Musk said the odds of catching the booster with the launch tower this year are 80 to 90 percent.
It will take longer to land and begin reusing Starship’s upper stage, which must survive the fiery reentry through Earth’s atmosphere. This vehicle broke apart and burned up during its attempt to return through the atmosphere during a flight test in March. On the next flight, Musk said, the goal for Starship’s upper stage is to survive this heating and make a controlled landing in the ocean. At some point this year, he expects SpaceX to achieve this milestone and then begin landing Starships back in Texas next year.
Building More, Building Bigger
SpaceX is also building additional ground-based infrastructure and making design upgrades to Starship.
Musk said the company will construct a second launch tower in Texas to facilitate additional developmental test flights. And by the end of 2025 it intends to have two Starship launch towers in Florida to begin supporting operational launches. Initially, these are likely to support Artemis lunar landing missions for NASA.
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