On some Martian slopes , in the warmer calendar month , dark streaks appear . They are know as Recurring Slope Lineae or RSL and they were first thought to be a rare exercise of flow , briny water on Mars . This claim was re - correct after play along - up observation point out that theflow behaved like sand , although it could n’t explicate the seasonal nature of them . Now , a new hypothesis tries to bridge the two .
As reported inScience Advances , the new subject field suggests that salt and melting meth could regard the terrain run to the shaping of the landslides we detect as RSL . Instead of flow water , the team believe that modest - scale fundamental interaction between water water ice , chlorine salts , and sulfates produce a slush when temperature increase during the Martian summer . This brackish slush can inspire background collapse and upheaval , chair to a surface menstruation of dust and sand . In other word , a landslide .
“ I am excited about the prospect of microscale liquid body of water on Mars in near - surface environment where sparkler and salts are mixed with the soil , ” lead writer and SETI Institute scientist Dr Janice Bishop said in astatement . “ This could revolutionize our perspective on participating alchemy just below the surface on Mars today . ”
Over the last five years , researchers consider how terrain on Earth could multiply what we are seeing on Mars . The most likely scenario is that the RSL is unparalleled to the Red Planet ’s environment but we can still teach something from the extreme terrain of the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica , the Dead Sea in Israel , and the Salar de Pajonales ( salt flats ) in the Atacama Desert , Chile .
In those dry , salt - plentiful surroundings , a second of subsurface water can cause surface interruption and landslides . The team took these observation further by create a Mars soil analog in the lab . This concoction was frozen and then thawed slowly . The squad reported slushy chalk forming at -50 ° C ( -58 ° F ) , followed by the gradual melting of the crank from -40 ° C to -20 ° C ( -40 ° F to -4 ° atomic number 9 ) .
“ examine the miserable - temperature behavior of Mars analog permafrost in the lab with infrared spectroscopy revealed that thin layers of liquid - like water were take form along grain surfaces as the salty soils thawed under subzero , Mars - comparable temperature , ” said Merve Ye?ilba ? , NASA Postdoctoral ( NPP ) Fellow at the SETI Institute .
This scenario is for sure challenging and it has some support , but more evidence will be necessary to corroborate that this is indeed the chemical mechanism behind the mysterious RSL .
