A shock for planetologists: Volcanoes close to the equator of Mars are lined in black frost – Information

The white frost within the orbiter’s pictures covers the craters of volcanoes within the volcanic area of the Tharsis mountains, which extends across the equator for about 5,000 kilometers. The best mountain within the Photo voltaic System can be right here – the 22 kilometer excessive protect volcano Olympus Mons.

The scientific workforce that reported the invention in an expert journal Pure sciencesshock hoarfrost.

“We thought it was unimaginable across the equator of Mars,” he mentioned ESA web site planetologist Adomas Valantinas, the principle writer of the examine, who labored on the College of Bern in Switzerland and is now a researcher at Brown College in america.

“The mixture of daylight and skinny environment right here retains floor and mountain temperatures comparatively excessive, in contrast to what we see on Earth, the place we are able to anticipate frozen peaks,” mentioned Valantinas. In accordance with him, it’s attention-grabbing that there’s frost in such conditions.

“Different probes have additionally recorded icing, however in wetter areas, particularly on the northern plains of Mars,” one of many authors of the examine, Frédéric Schmidt from the College of Saclay, a suburb of Paris, instructed AFP.

Frost-covered surfaces final just a few hours round dawn, after which they evaporate. They’re skinny, possibly solely a hundredth of a millimeter thick, in regards to the dimension of a human hair.

However they cowl a big space. The ice layer represents about 150,000 tons of water, which evaporates into the environment through the chilly seasons on Mars after which freezes once more as frost.

In accordance with the ESA, this quantity of water is equal to about 60 Olympic swimming swimming pools.