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A new study claims that landslides on Mars during the summer months can be caused by soil salts and melting ice.
Using simulated Martian soil samples, researchers at the US SETI Institute recreated Martian landslides on a miniature scale in the laboratory. The frozen, salted, chlorine-laden samples were thawed at temperatures intended to mimic the summer of March, resulting in liquid water and mud.
According to the British daily Daily Mail, on Mars, “the melting ice in the rich – the dusty blanket of sediment on the planet’s surface” is due to interactions between chlorine and sulfate salts. This leads to an unstable, liquid-like imbalance that leads to sinkholes and the Earth collapsing, leaving streaks .. Noticeable darkness, as observed by NASA.
The study indicates that Mars has an ever-changing “dynamic and active environment” that has implications for human future exploration of the Red Planet, experts say.
“I am excited about the possibility of microscopic liquid water on Mars in near-surface environments where there is ice and salt,” said study author and principal investigator at SETI, the Dr Janice Bishop.
“It could revolutionize our view of habitability below the surface of Mars today,” she added.
“This could include RSL landslides, avalanches and other slippery debris, but RSL is the best-documented version of these features,” she told MailOnline.
“Several thousand RSLs have been identified in more than 50 cliffs, from the equator almost halfway to the poles,” she said.
“On Earth, it is known that only leaking waters have these behaviors, but how they form in the dry Martian environment is not yet clear,” she said.
Dr Bishop said: “Our study tested frozen soil and found that chlorine salts still liquefy small frozen fractions of soil, which is closer to the types of material found in the equatorial regions of Mars where there are has RSL and stagnation on Mars MailOnline.
“In higher latitudes on the surface of Mars, blocks of ice (like the Phoenix landing site”) are found below the surface and sometimes exposed to the surface, but there is usually no RSL in it. these areas.
Geologists have discussed the bizarre behavior of Martian landslides since their first reconnaissance nearly half a century ago.
They can travel at speeds of up to 360 kilometers per hour (approximately 220 miles per hour) on flat surfaces.
Previous theories suggested that the flow of liquid debris or dry granular material was the cause of these landslides, but none of these theories could explain the seasonal flow characteristics of Mars, known as “RSL”. .
RSLs are seasonal dark streaks on Mars that gradually spread down the hill during warmer seasons, then fade in winter and reappear the following year.
“We thought of RSL as potential streams of liquid water, but the slopes are very similar to what we would expect for dry sand,” said Colin Dundas of the Center for Astro Geosciences at the US Geological Survey. “Some RSLs seen near the Martian equator are often explained. However, they are linked to larger features called canyons, which look like valleys on Earth.”
Images from NASA’s Mars Exploration Orbiter (MRO) have provided images of RSL on cliffs facing the Sun, where it continues to emerge and could expand over time.
Previous studies have suggested an association of RSL with chlorine salts and observed that they occur in bumps where high levels of sulfate are present.
The GIF from NASA and the University of Arizona shows the evolution of RSL in the Palikir crater on Mars, as seen by MRO six times during 29-30 years on Mars.
Field surveys have also indicated on the ground, such as the dry valleys of Antarctica, the Dead Sea in Israel and the Salar de Pagonales in the Atacama Desert.
These ground experiments have shown that when salts interact with gypsum or groundwater, they cause surface disturbances, including landslides and landslides.
“Modeling the behavior of chlorine and sulfate salts, including gypsum, at low temperatures shows how these salts are interconnected,” the SETI Institute said in a statement.
Perhaps this delicate liquid water migrates underground to the surface of Mars, moving water molecules between sulfates and chlorides, like passing a soccer ball across the field.
Further laboratory experiments tested these sulfate chloride reactions in simulated Martian soil with color markers, and revealed the underground hydration of these salts and the migration of salts through soil grains.
This project was born from work on the sediments of the dry valleys of McMurdo in Antarctica, one of the coldest and drier regions on the planet.
Similar to Mars, dry winds dried up the surface regimes of the dry valleys for most of the year.
“Sediments in dry valleys provide an excellent test for the processes that can occur on Mars,” said Zachary Burton, a recent Stanford graduate and collaborator at the SETI Institute NAI.
“The presence of high concentrations of sulfates and chlorides a few centimeters below the hard surface of the Wright Valley represents an intriguing possibility that these mineral correlations associated with water and associated processes also exist on the surface of Mars,” a- he added.
Water ice has been detected beneath the surface of Mars in the washed away soil where NASA’s robotic Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars in 2008, as well as from orbit using measurements radar and using gamma-neutron spectroscopy.
The article is published in Science Advances.
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