Weird patterns with black lines on Mars

Mars continues to delight us with extraordinary new images captured from space by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

On March 30, HiRISE tool, whose mission was to photograph the Red Planet from every angle, gave us a surprising view of the Martian surface, studded with strange polygonal patterns. A patchwork of these fractures is present in the Martian soil At high latitudes. It is in places associated with the appearance of black and blue lines.

A spring on Mars

It’s amazing Metamorphosis This part of Mars is most simply connected to the change in temperature and more precisely connected to the arrival of spring!

In Winter, water in the ground freezes and expands, slicing the surface of the land into many polygons. But in spring, with rising temperatures, Dry ice Stored under the surface, instead of passing through the stage, it is converted to gas Liquid. A well-known process in physics called sublimation. This change opens the passages, especially at the level of the corners of the polygons, which allows the jets to escape. Carbon dioxide. It is these jets that contain fine black particles that leave dark and bluish traces on the surface. The orientation of these marks may vary depending on the wind direction.

These polygons last for years, with cracks opening and closing Seasons Martians are slowly eroding the terrain.