Every morning in Martian spring and summer, a thin cloud forms near the volcano Arsia Mons and stretches out to more than 1,000 miles, about New York to Kansas City, before it vanishes. Then it does it again the next day, for months. Ars Technica reports scientists may finally know why.
What they found
- The Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC) was first recorded by a probe in 2018, and nobody could explain it.
- A new study in Nature Geoscience, led by Jorge Hernández-Bernal of Sorbonne Université, modeled it for the first time.
- The model only worked with homogeneous nucleation: vapor turning straight into ice crystals with no dust or salt to form on. That’s been treated as textbook theory and never seen in action. “It’s akin to droplets of condensation appearing in the middle of a room, rather than on a window.”
- It needs extreme conditions: a 30°C temperature drop within 10 minutes and high humidity. The 65,000-foot volcano throws moist air high into the atmosphere fast enough to make it happen.
My take
Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God.” He wrote physics into Mars that we’re only now catching up to. I love that every time we look closer, creation has another surprise waiting.
Have a blessed day! And Happy Hacking!
