Plumes seen reaching high above the surface of Mars are causing a stir among scientists studying the atmosphere on the Red Planet.
On two separate occasions in March and April 2012, amateur astronomers reported definite plume-like features developing on the planet.
The plumes were seen rising to altitudes of over 250 km above the same region of Mars on both occasions. By comparison, similar features seen in the past have not exceeded 100 km.
"At about 250 km, the division between the atmosphere and outer space is very thin, so the reported plumes are extremely unexpected," says Agustin Sanchez-Lavega of the Universidad del País Vasco in Spain, lead author of the paper reporting the results in the journal Nature.
The features developed in less than 10 hours, covering an area of up to 1000 x 500 km, and remained visible for around 10 days, changing their structure from day to day.
None of the spacecraft orbiting Mars saw the features because of their viewing geometries and illumination conditions at the time.
However, checking archived Hubble Space Telescope images taken between 1995 and 1999 and of databases of amateur images spanning 2001 to 2014 revealed occasional clouds at the limb of Mars, albeit usually only up to 100 km in altitude.
But one set of Hubble images from 17 May 1997 revealed an abnormally high plume, similar to that spotted by the amateur astronomers in 2012.
https://phys.org/news/2015-02-cloud-mars-scientists-baffled.html
A curious plume-like feature was observed on Mars on May 17, 1997 by the Hubble Space Telescope.
It is similar to the features detected by amateur astronomers in 2012, although appeared in a
different location. Credit: JPL/NASA/STScI
https://www.universetoday.com/129106/space-weather-causing-martian-atmospherics/
Obviously global warming from all of the SUVs there.
Mars sneezed. It’s a booger.
a really big smokestack?
He's trying to signal us that he can't make orbit!
What! No Uranus jokes?
Martian off-road race going on?
Belly Button Lint
Major constituents of the dry1 atmosphere of Mars:
95.9% carbon dioxide (CO2);
2% Argon (Ar);
1.9% Nitrogen (N2);
0.14% Oxygen (O2).
Major constituents of the dry atmosphere of Earth:
.04% carbon dioxide (CO2);
0.93% Argon (Ar);
78.08% Nitrogen (N2);
20.95% Oxygen (O2).
Doesn't sound like "vastly different elements" to me. Author doesn't know what he is talking about.
1. "Dry" atmosphere excludes highly variable water vapor constituent.
“Although Mars’ atmosphere is comprised of vastly different elements than Earth’s”
Huh? Different composition, maybe. Different percentages. But “vastly different elements”? Do they have their very own Martian Periodic Table of the Elements?
It sprung a leak.
It is just military style smoke screen to cover construction projects.
Around the same time that the dinosaurs became extinct on Earth, a volcano on Mars went dormant, NASA researchers have learned.
Arsia Mons is the southernmost volcano in a group of three massive Martian volcanoes known collectively as Tharsis Montes. Until now, the volcano's history has remained a mystery. But thanks to a new computer model, scientists were finally able to figure out when Arsia Mons stopped spewing out lava.
According to the model, volcanic activity at Arsia Mons came to a halt about 50 million years ago. Around that same time, Earth experienced the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which wiped out three-quarters of its animal and plant species, including the dinosaurs.
Jacob Richardson, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and co-author of the new study, presented the findings today (March 20) at the 48th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas.
"We estimate that the peak activity for the volcanic field at the summit of Arsia Mons probably occurred approximately 150 million years ago — the late Jurassic period on Earth — and then died out around the same time as Earth’s dinosaurs," Richardson said in a statement. "It’s possible, though, that the last volcanic vent or two might have been active in the past 50 million years, which is very recent in geological terms."
Richardson and his team identified 29 volcanic vents on Arsia Mons. These vents are located inside the caldera — the crater-shaped depression on top of the volcano. Calderas form when volcanoes collapse under their own weight as lava accumulates on top. The caldera on Arsia Mons, which is big enough to hold at least all the water in Lake Huron, measures 69 miles (110 kilometers) across.
To figure out when the volcano was last active, Richardson and his team used high-resolution images from Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to map lava flows around the 29 vents. Tallying craters around the volcano helped them to determine how long the lava flows had been there. Combining this data, the researchers determined that the most recent volcanic activity occurred 10 to 90 million years ago. The oldest lava flows are about 200 million years old.
"Think of it like a slow, leaky faucet of magma," Richardson said. "Arsia Mons was creating about one volcanic vent every 1 to 3 million years at the peak, compared to one every 10,000 years or so in similar regions on Earth."
The results of the study were published in January in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
https://www.space.com/36138-mars-volcano-died-with-dinosaurs.html
