Massive 'Dust Towers' on Mars Look Like Superd Versions of Earth's Thunderstorms

[Admin]

Massive dust towers on Mars that formed during global storms may be 'space elevators' that contributed to the loss of the planet's ancient water, according to NASA's description of new research.

Massive 'Dust Towers' on Mars Look Like Superd Versions of Earth's Thunderstorms : Read more

 

[rod]

The report showed an image of Mars before and during the big dust storm last year. "The Mars Color Imager (MARCI) camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows the typical state of Mars, seen here in May 2018, and what the planet looked like during a planet-encircling dust storm in July 2018."

Many amateur telescope users viewed Mars in July 2018 during the Mars opposition and dust storm. I viewed too during Mars opposition and the yellowish or almost pumpkin color was widely reported by telescope observers like myself. I am looking forward to Mars opposition of 2020 in October and no dust storm (hopefully). Telescope observations show NASA does not report *fake news* as some claim today Seeing the images in this report brought back memories and written in my stargazing log. Of course, MRO shows a better view though but my telescopes were still pretty good

 

[Gordon Jenkins]

Wow! I think it's called the Sun. Without a magnetic field to protect Mars (or Earth during Geomagnetic pole reversal like right now), a major CME, Super Flare or Micro Nova would be all that is required and that's all she wrote. Kind of like How Earth lost a huge amount of Oxygen and how mega Fauna disappeared from North America. How do you miss or obfuscate from something like that?

 

[rod]

Yes, the Sun - the Faint Young Sun. Earth during deep Precambrian time was a SnowBall Earth Just think about Mars and the Faint Young Sun, billions of years ago, orbiting even farther out from the Sun. The primordial and Precambrian Sun plot or position on the H-R star diagram is nothing like today's friendly, warm Sun

 

[Wally Mayo]

We see these upshoots today. But, how about billions of years ago? Could these be a result of the decimation of Mars atmosphere much earlier?

Virginia Tech geophysicists analyzed the jarosite mineral detected by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Rather than proving that Mars once provided a warm, wet environment conducive for the origin and proliferation of life, the discovery instead demonstrates that liquid water only briefly existed on Mars, in limited amounts, and under chemical conditions toxic for life’s origin and survival. Moreover, they demonstrated that the survival to the present time of jarosite on Mars, in combination with residual basalt, proves that Mars has remained extremely arid since the time of the formation of Martian jarosite. The team’s analysis adds to the weight of evidence that Mars is far more inhospitable for life than previously thought and Earth is much more exquisitely fine-tuned for life than previously thought.

[M. E. Elwood Madden, R. J. Bodnar, and J. D. Rimstidt, “Jarosite as an Indicator of Water-Limited Chemical Weathering on Mars,” Nature 431 (2004): 821-23. https://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v431/n7010/abs/nature02971_fs.html

Thinking of magnetic fields, Mars’ dynamo shut down 4.0–4.1 billion years ago and has never restarted since then. [Robert J. Lillis et al., “Time History of the Martian Dynamo from Crater Magnetic Field Analysis,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 118, no. 7 (July 2013): 1488–1511, doi:10.1002/jgre.20105; G. Schubert, C. T. Russell, and W. B. Moore, “Timing of the Martian Dynamo,” Nature 408 (December 7, 2000): 666–67, doi:10.1038.35047163.] Furthermore, the lower a planet’s atmospheric pressure, the more rapid its rate of water loss and the greater its radiation dose at the planet’s surface. While the shutdown of Mars’ dynamo might not have been immediately detrimental to possible life, the long-term effects of the dynamo shutdown would have been permanently catastrophic and would guarantee the loss of vitually all of Mars’s surface water, early on.

Good discovery and innovative thinking. I’m just not convinced the dust towers are the main mode of Mars water exit.