• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Chemistry

Meteors help Martian clouds form

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
June 17, 2019
in Chemistry
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

How did the Red Planet get all of its clouds? CU Boulder researchers may have discovered the secret: just add meteors.

Astronomers have long observed clouds in Mars’ middle atmosphere, which begins about 18 miles (30 kilometers) above the surface, but have struggled to explain how they formed.

Now, a new study, which will be published on June 17 in the journal Nature Geoscience, examines those wispy accumulations and suggests that they owe their existence to a phenomenon called “meteoric smoke”–essentially, the icy dust created by space debris slamming into the planet’s atmosphere.

The findings are a good reminder that planets and their weather patterns aren’t isolated from the solar systems around them.

“We’re used to thinking of Earth, Mars and other bodies as these really self-contained planets that determine their own climates,” said Victoria Hartwick, a graduate student in the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences (ATOC) and lead author of the new study. “But climate isn’t independent of the surrounding solar system.”

The research, which included co-authors Brian Toon at CU Boulder and Nicholas Heavens at Hampton University in Virginia, hangs on a basic fact about clouds: They don’t come out of nowhere.

“Clouds don’t just form on their own,” said Hartwick, also of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU Boulder. “They need something that they can condense onto.”

On Earth, for example, low-lying clouds begin life as tiny grains of sea salt or dust blown high into the air. Water molecules clump around these particles, becoming bigger and bigger until they form the large puffs that you can see from the ground.

But, as far as scientists can tell, those sorts of cloud seeds don’t exist in Mars’ middle atmosphere, Hartwick said. And that’s what led her and her colleagues to meteors.

Hartwick explained that about two to three tons of space debris crash into Mars every day on average. And as those meteors rip apart in the planet’s atmosphere, they inject a huge volume of dust into the air.

To find out if such smoke would be enough to give rise to Mars’ mysterious clouds, Hartwick’s team turned to massive computer simulations that attempt to mimic the flows and turbulence of the planet’s atmosphere.

And sure enough, when they included meteors in their calculations, clouds appeared.

“Our model couldn’t form clouds at these altitudes before,” Hartwick said. “But now, they’re all there, and they seem to be in all the right places.”

The idea might not be as outlandish as it sounds, she added. Research has shown that similar interplanetary schmutz may help to seed clouds near Earth’s poles.

But she also says that you shouldn’t expect to see gigantic thunderheads forming above the surface of Mars anytime soon. The clouds her team studied were much more like bits of cotton candy than the clouds Earthlings are used to.

“But just because they’re thin and you can’t really see them doesn’t mean they can’t have an effect on the dynamics of the climate,” Hartwick said.

The researchers’ simulations, for example, showed that middle atmosphere clouds could have a large impact on the Martian climate. Depending on where the team looked, those clouds could cause temperatures at high altitudes to swing up or down by as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius).

And that climactic impact is what gets Brian Toon, a professor in ATOC, excited. He said that the team’s findings on modern-day Martian clouds may also help to reveal the planet’s past evolution and how it once managed to support liquid water at its surface.

“More and more climate models are finding that the ancient climate of Mars, when rivers were flowing across its surface and life might have originated, was warmed by high altitude clouds,” Toon said. “It is likely that this discovery will become a major part of that idea for warming Mars.”

###

Media Contact
Daniel Strain
[email protected]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0379-6

Tags: AstronomyAstrophysicsAtmospheric ChemistryAtmospheric ScienceComets/AsteroidsMeteorologyPlanets/MoonsSatellite Missions/ShuttlesSpace/Planetary ScienceWeather/Storms
Share12Tweet7Share2ShareShareShare1

Related Posts

Advancing Green Technology with More Efficient and Reliable SiC Devices

Advancing Green Technology with More Efficient and Reliable SiC Devices

August 26, 2025
JUNO Successfully Completes Liquid Filling and Commences Data Acquisition

JUNO Successfully Completes Liquid Filling and Commences Data Acquisition

August 26, 2025

Durable and Flexible Porous Crystals Showcase Exceptional Gas Sorption Capabilities

August 25, 2025

Rice’s Martí, Sarlah, and Wang Receive National American Chemical Society Honors

August 25, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • blank

    Breakthrough in Computer Hardware Advances Solves Complex Optimization Challenges

    147 shares
    Share 59 Tweet 37
  • Molecules in Focus: Capturing the Timeless Dance of Particles

    142 shares
    Share 57 Tweet 36
  • New Drug Formulation Transforms Intravenous Treatments into Rapid Injections

    115 shares
    Share 46 Tweet 29
  • Neuropsychiatric Risks Linked to COVID-19 Revealed

    81 shares
    Share 32 Tweet 20

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Preeclampsia Alters Ferroptosis Markers in Placenta

Quantifying Age-Related Thymic Changes via Chest CT

N-Doped Carbon Coated SnP2O7 Enhances Lithium-Ion Anodes

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.