We’m sorry to let you know that giant spiders do not actually live on Mars.
Creepy Crawlies
Scientists have been stunned for decades by bizarre formations on Mars’ south pole that look like giant spiders.
This is not to say that astronomers were concerned that future outposts of Mars would be attacked by giant alien arthropods, but the unusual geological formations still eluded the explanation for years. Live Science reports. Now it looks like a team of scientists from the UK have figured it out, thanks to a bit of dry ice, a pile of dirt and a machine that can recreate the atmosphere of Mars here on earth.
Sublime experimentation
As early as 2003, researchers suspected that the 3,300-foot “spiders” had something to do with Mars’ carbon-rich ice that sublimated, or to transform directly from a solid into a gas, but no way to do that. to test out. Live Science reports.
But now British researchers have been able to create smaller versions of the formations in a laboratory by pressing dry ice against warmer sediment, according to research published in the journal last month. Scientific reports. When they did so in an artificial Mars-like atmosphere, the ice sublimated and plummeted outward, cutting the bony trenches into the dirt.
Test grounds
Mystery solved! Aside from confirming what Mars’ spiders did, the fact that the experimental Martian-like conditions created the same formations as on real Mars suggests that scientists now have a powerful tool to study Martian phenomena without actually traveling there.
“This research provides the first set of empirical evidence for a surface process that could potentially alter the polar landscape on Mars,” Open University planetary planetary scientist and lead author Lauren McKeown said in a press release. “The experiments directly show that the spider patterns we observe on the orbit of Mars can be carved by the direct conversion of dry ice from solid to gas.”
READ MORE: Ghostly ‘spiders on Mars’ are finally explained after two decades [Live Science]
More about Mars: Study: Ancient Mars was covered with ice sheets, not rivers
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