• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Famous Dark Streaks On Mars Might Not Be What We Were Hoping For

May 19, 2025 by Deborah Bloomfield

A decade ago, researchers found what was considered the best evidence for the flow of very salty water on Mars: the occasional formation of dark streaks on the sides of dunes. The possibility of water plays a huge role in the possibility of life, so for a decade, scientists have been checking, double-checking, arguing, and counterarguing about these features. The latest word is not what many were hoping for: the streaks don’t seem to be related to water.

To tackle the mystery of the streaks and whether they are evidence of liquid flow, researchers at Brown University and the University of Bern created the largest catalog of streaks on Mars. Using a machine learning algorithm, they classified more than 86,000 high-resolution satellite images to find more than 500,000 across Martian slopes.

“Once we had this global map, we could compare it to databases and catalogs of other things like temperature, wind speed, hydration, rock slide activity and other factors,” co-lead author Valentin Bickel, a researcher at the University of Bern, said in a statement. “Then we could look for correlations over hundreds of thousands of cases to better understand the conditions under which these features form.”

Slope streaks and temporary formations known as recurring slope lineae (RSL) do not seem to be associated with liquid or frost origin. Across the whole half a million examples, they do not seem to form in conjunction with specific orientations, increases in temperature, or humidity. They do actually seem to form in conjunction with above-average wind speed and dust deposition, strongly indicating a dry origin.

“A big focus of Mars research is understanding modern-day processes on Mars — including the possibility of liquid water on the surface,” explained co-lead author Adomas Valantinas, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown. “Our study reviewed these features but found no evidence of water. Our model favors dry formation processes.”

While that is bad news for habitability, the findings suggest that these streaks can play a global role. Even half a million of them can’t change much of the surface of the Red Planet; they actually only modify less than 0.1 percent of Mars. But they shift an amount of dust equivalent to several global dust storms, which is very significant. 

The findings might impact where we will look for life in the future for sure.

“That’s the advantage of this big data approach,” Valantinas said. “It helps us to rule out some hypotheses from orbit before we send spacecraft to explore.”

The study is published in Nature Communications.  

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Japan’s Kishida: Aim distribute COVID-19 drugs by year-end if elected PM
  2. First Week Of July Was The Hottest On Record And El Niño Will Make This Worse
  3. Why Do Animals Have Different Pupil Shapes?
  4. Beneath The Middle East, An Ancient Seabed Is Splitting From The Continental Plates

Source Link: Famous Dark Streaks On Mars Might Not Be What We Were Hoping For

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “Carter Catastrophe”: The Math Equation That Predicts The End Of Humanity
  • Why Is There No Nobel Prize For Mathematics?
  • These Are The Only Animals Known To Incubate Eggs In Their Stomachs And Give “Birth” Out Their Mouths
  • Constipated? This One Fruit Could Help, Says First-Ever Evidence-Led Diet Guidance
  • NGC 2775: This Galaxy Breaks The Rules Of “Galactic Evolution” And Baffles Astronomers
  • Meet The “Four-Eyed” Hirola, The World’s Most Endangered Antelope With Fewer Than 500 Left
  • The Bizarre 1997 Experiment That Made A Frog Levitate
  • There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
  • Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
  • There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
  • Why Do Trains Not Have Seatbelts? It’s Probably Not What You Think
  • World’s Driest Hot Desert Just Burst Into A Rare And Fleeting Desert Bloom
  • Theoretical Dark Matter Infernos Could Melt The Earth’s Core, Turning It Liquid
  • North America’s Largest Mammal Once Numbered 60 Million – Then Humans Nearly Drove It To Extinction
  • North America’s Largest Ever Land Animal Was A 21-Meter-Long Titan
  • A Two-Headed Fossil, 50/50 Spider, And World-First Butt Drag
  • Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Losing Buckets Of Water Every Second – And It’s Got Cyanide
  • “A Historic Shift”: Renewables Generated More Power Than Coal Globally For First Time
  • The World’s Oldest Known Snake In Captivity Became A Mom At 62 – No Dad Required
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version