Boiling Water On Mars Could details Video How Its Dark-Streaks Form

When scientists exposed liquid water flowing on Mars previous year, one thing was particularly puzzling. How was water able to remain liquid long enough to create large streaks on the surface?
Now, a team of scientists led by the University of Nantes think they power have an answer. Published in Nature Geoscience, the team has establish that water on Mars should boil in a decidedly non-Earth-like manner, dislodging debris and create the dark streaks known as recurring slope lineae (RSL).
“Our research shows that you require a lot less water than thought to form such features,” co-author Dr. Susan Conway from the University of Nantes told IFLScience.

The Martian atmosphere is so thin that water pending to the surface from underground should roughly instantly boil and evaporate. We had theorized previously this would take place, although this hadn’t directly been observed. But this learn helps to constrain exactly how that process may shape features on the surface.
The research was performing at the Open University in Milton Keynes, where the researchers used a “Mars chamber” to simulate the setting on the Martian surface. They located a block of ice at the top of a slope of sand, with the melting water seeping under the sediment. As the water come into contact with the air, it evaporated, cause the sediment to jump.
On Mars, a similar process likely takes place. The water seeps up from below the Martian surface (through a process that is still not understood) and, as it reach the surface, it boils. Small debris on the surface is moved by the resultant water vapor, and eventually you get a cascade of material down a slope, creating the dark streak known as RSL.
“Paradoxically, in its place of requiring the stability of substantial water or brines, it is the volatility of water on Mars that may give details the morphological activity needed to form the observed features,” said Wouter Marra from the University of Utrecht in a Nature News and view article.

The study ultimately suggest that not as much water is needed on Mars to create its famous dark streaks, helping us explain the alien processes taking place on the outside in conditions that shouldn’t really allow water to stay a liquid for very long.

In fact, one reason the researchers think this hasn’t been chosen up on before is that it is unlike anything seen on Earth. “I think people over-looked a lot because we don’t have any terrestrial features on Earth caused by these mechanisms,” said Dr. Conway. “It’s important to do these experiment in the lab, to in fact look and see what happens.”