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rsl

We used to think of Mars as a dry, desolate planet devoid of running water. Then, in 2011 astronomers discovered show that liquid water might yet flow on the Martian surface. This gave scientists hope that life may even so exist on the cherry planet and that humans could more than easily fix camp at that place. All the same, new prove suggests by observations might non have been water at all. The dark streaks on Mars could simply be more sand.

Scientists refer to the mysterious nighttime streaks on Mars as recurring slope lineae, or RSL. They comport like you'd expect water to behave: in the warm season, the nighttime streaks announced by the thousands on steep slopes. They get longer and darker, until they abruptly vanish as winter takes agree. The leading hypothesis stated that alkali (water with high salt content) locked up in the soil would run down the slopes each spring, then recede in the winter.

A new analysis of RSL has been published in Nature Geoscience, conducted past a squad from the US Geological Survey, the Planetary Scientific discipline Establish, the University of Arizona, and the U.k.'s Durham University. The team used information from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (beneath), a satellite that has been observing Mars from more than 200 miles above for the last decade. The satellite was used to study 151 RSLs at 10 different sites, and the researchers noticed a strange trend. All the streaks concluded at similar points, no matter the length of the slope. If this was seeping h2o, the streaks should exist longer on longer slopes.

The team says RSL compare more accurately to granular flows here on Earth — Martian soil that'southward sliding downwardly the slopes. This would involve little or no liquid water in the RSL. The presence of hydrated salts on Mars could play a role, though. These molecules can pull water vapor out of the thin atmosphere, which could crusade the darkening and trigger an RSL without "flowing" water.

Whatever the cause, the study notes that we won't know until an RSL can exist investigated first-hand. Globe is the only analog to Mars nosotros have, and there are too many differences to examination our current hypotheses here. Even if a future rover determines at that place's no flowing h2o in RSLs, nosotros do know there's plenty of water on Mars in the form of water ice at extreme latitudes. There are too other signs that liquid h2o could be in other areas.