Spring etch-a-sketch near the Martian south pole
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 28, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as a “terrain sample,” it was likely snapped not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule so as to maintain its proper temperature.
The camera team tries to find interesting geology when they do this, and are frequently successful. In this case the image shows some truly alien Martian terrain at 77 degrees south latitude, about 475 miles from the south pole.
What are we looking at? I promise you it isn’t the iron filings found inside an Etch-A-Sketch drawing toy. My guess is that the base layer is the light areas, a mixture of ice and debris impregnated with dust and eroded into the unique Martian geological feature dubbed brain terrain. As for the dark lines and splotches, their explanation might lie in the time of year, the spring.
The white dot near the top of the overview map to the right marks the location of this picture. During the winter months the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere will fall as snow, covering the polar regions down to 60 degrees latitude with a thin mantle of transparent dry ice. When spring arrives the sunlight hits the base below this mantle, heats it, and causes that mantle to sublimate into gas, from the bottom up.
The gas however is trapped. In the southern hemisphere it will follow the same topography upward year after year until it finds a weak point in the mantle. There the mantle cracks, and the gas bursts out, spewing dark dust on top of the mantle. As it was spring when this photo was taken, the dark lines and splotches are where those cracks have appeared, releasing the dust onto the mantle.
The dark lines are thus outlining the topography of brain terrain at this location. They don’t explain the process that forms brain terrain (it remains unexplained) but they do delineate it for us.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 28, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as a “terrain sample,” it was likely snapped not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule so as to maintain its proper temperature.
The camera team tries to find interesting geology when they do this, and are frequently successful. In this case the image shows some truly alien Martian terrain at 77 degrees south latitude, about 475 miles from the south pole.
What are we looking at? I promise you it isn’t the iron filings found inside an Etch-A-Sketch drawing toy. My guess is that the base layer is the light areas, a mixture of ice and debris impregnated with dust and eroded into the unique Martian geological feature dubbed brain terrain. As for the dark lines and splotches, their explanation might lie in the time of year, the spring.
The white dot near the top of the overview map to the right marks the location of this picture. During the winter months the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere will fall as snow, covering the polar regions down to 60 degrees latitude with a thin mantle of transparent dry ice. When spring arrives the sunlight hits the base below this mantle, heats it, and causes that mantle to sublimate into gas, from the bottom up.
The gas however is trapped. In the southern hemisphere it will follow the same topography upward year after year until it finds a weak point in the mantle. There the mantle cracks, and the gas bursts out, spewing dark dust on top of the mantle. As it was spring when this photo was taken, the dark lines and splotches are where those cracks have appeared, releasing the dust onto the mantle.
The dark lines are thus outlining the topography of brain terrain at this location. They don’t explain the process that forms brain terrain (it remains unexplained) but they do delineate it for us.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Those are clearly the monsters from ATTACK THE BLOCK circling the Kaaba