From a Space.com news item on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft:
NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft has spotted new gullies and a fresh crater – in astronomical terms – etched into the red planet’s surface, mission scientists said Tuesday. Now in its eighth year in orbit around Mars, the MGS spacecraft found the new gullies cutting through a sand dune, as well as numerous other signs that the planet is far from a static, unchanging world. “[The gullies] are probably not the result of water action on the sand dune,” said Michael Malin, principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard MGS, during teleconference with reporters. “What we think is going on here is that carbon dioxide snow has been incorporated into the sand dune.” As the snow melts and evaporates into gas, it allows the sand around it to fluidize and run down the dune slope, Malin added.
[..] The spacecraft also observed a gradual evaporation of carbon dioxide ice in one of Mars’ polar caps, pointing to a slowly changing Mars climate. “They way these polar pits are retreating is absolutely astounding,” Mustard said. But like the rockfalls, researchers were unable to account for the gradual climate change. “Why is Mars warmer today that it was in the past, we really have no way of knowing why,” Malin said. [“Mars Probe Finds New Gullies, Crater at Red Planet”]
Could this be global warming caused by the Martians use of man-made fossil fuels?
Comments blogger Ewan Coley at Brain Terminal:
Let’s see:
- Earth getting warmer.
- Mars getting warmer.
- Increased solar activity.
Gotta be those fossil fuels.