Astronomy Picture of the Day -- A Dust Devil on Mars

NASA ^ | March 03, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: It was late in the northern martian spring when the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spied this local denizen. Tracking across the flat, dust-covered Amazonis Planitia in 2012, the core of this whirling dust devil is about 140 meters in diameter. Lofting dust into the thin martian atmosphere, its plume reaches about 20 kilometers above the surface. Common to this region of Mars, dust devils occur as the surface is heated by the Sun, generating warm, rising air currents that begin to rotate. Tangential wind speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour are reported for dust devils in other HiRISE images.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA]

[SunkenCiv]

Clearly this is not natural, it's an industrial accident by some careless humans operating a secret base for the Illuminati and reptilian aliens. /s

The Big One

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[Irishguy]

we have to get off this rock and get out there...IMHO

[left that other site]

I got spilled on my Harley(in 2000, corner of State Rd 7 and Oakland park Blvd, Ft. Lauderdale) by one of those.
It wasn’t on Mars.

Brian Williams claims the same experience.

ON Mars.

[SunkenCiv]

We need to get a number of others off this rock and out there. Of course, that would be expensive, probably just dump them in the ocean.

[reed13k]

“dust devils occur as the surface is heated by the Sun, generating warm, rising air currents that begin to rotate”

Clearly manmade global warming - science is settled. This guy needs to be outed for saying otherwise.