Thank you for reading the news about technology: Scientists solve “invisible” frost and avalanches on the Red Planet and now with the details
Cairo – Samia Sayed – There are vast areas of frost on Mars that can only be seen in the infrared range of the spectrum, and not in visible light, for reasons that scientists have not been able to explain currently, according to what RT reported.
But, using data from NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, scientists at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, have come up with a theory that explains this “invisible” frost on surface Mars. Scientists suggest that the frost may be camouflaged by dust, an idea that could also explain the mysterious phenomenon similar to dust avalanches on Mars.
In a more meaningful sense, the recent study shows that the ghostly white-blue frost that covers the surface of Mars is “dirty” and mixed with dust grains, making much of it hidden from the naked eye.
Frost develops on Mars overnight and is made up of carbon dioxide, which is essentially dry ice, so when the sun rises, the frost evaporates rather than melts, and a heat-sensitive visible-light camera on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2001, captures Areas of blue and white frost regularly.
Mars Odyssey is NASA’s longest-lived Mars mission and carries the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), an infrared or temperature-sensitive camera that provides a unique view of the Martian surface.
When scientists looked at images of the surface of Mars taken by NASA in visible light, the kind seen by the human eye, they saw a ghostly blue-and-white frost shining from the rising sun.
However, when they looked using the orbiter’s heat-sensitive camera, the frost appeared more widely, in areas none of which was visible in visible light waves.
“Our first theory was that ice could be buried there,” Lucas Lange, an intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the project, said in a statement. “Dry ice is plentiful near the poles of Mars, but we were looking closer to the planet’s equator, where it is generally too warm to A dry sleet is forming.”
So scientists resorted to an alternative theory – they suspect that what the infrared camera captures is “dirty frost” contaminated with dust.
This dirty frost is masked by visible light, but a heat-sensitive camera can still capture its cold temperature.
This frost theory will also explain another Martian mystery, which is the phenomenon of dust avalanches, and scientists have explained the presence of long, dark streaks extending 3,300 feet down the slopes of Mars, caused by avalanches that reshape the mountainsides across the planet slowly over millions of years, which removed the upper layer. Drape it to reveal a darker colored substance underneath.
Researchers who have studied ‘invisible’ frost have determined that these ‘cliff lines’, as they are known, appear in areas with morning frost.
So the scientists suggested that avalanches might occur as the frost evaporates, loosening dust grains on the slopes.
Chris Edwards, a planetary scientist at Northern Arizona University and co-author of the research paper, explained in the statement: “Every time we send a mission to Mars, we discover strange new processes. We don’t have anything like a sloping line on Earth, you have to think beyond. From your experiences on Earth to understand Mars.