"Volunteers find ‘spiders’ on Mars – but not where..." Topic

… they expected.

"The ‘spiders' are named for their arachnid-like appearance and are a type of land erosion where networks of cracks form on Martian soil, completely different to anything on Earth. The discovery was made by volunteers working on behalf of Planet Four: Terrains, an online project hosted by Zooniverse, the world's largest and most popular people-powered research platform.

Araneiforms – the scientific name for these features – occur at the planet's South Pole and form when carbon dioxide turns to ice during the Martian winter. As the seasons change, direct sunlight penetrates the translucent ice, warming the land beneath. The land surface then gets eroded as the gas races out and rips off little bits of dirt, forming spindly branches which resemble spider legs…"

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link

Amicalement
Armand

Or they were blasted!

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

It's sad that this is going under the radar. Not the story of the CO2 Spiders but how they got discovered. Not by scientists, but by interested laymen using Zooniverse.

"The Zooniverse is the world's largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. This research is made possible by volunteers—hundreds of thousands of people around the world who come together to assist professional researchers. Our goal is to enable research that would not be possible, or practical, otherwise. Zooniverse research results in new discoveries, datasets useful to the wider research community, and many publications."

IMHO, this is the cool story.

zooniverse.org

Bowman: "It's sad that this is going under the radar. Not the story of the CO2 Spiders but how they got discovered. Not by scientists, but by interested laymen using Zooniverse."

Why is that a sad thing?

Dan

It's sad that the story of an interesting scientific discovery made by laymen didn't have much traction. It's hard to compete with what designer bag is being worn by which Kardashian, I guess.

I seem to recall something similar happening somewhere up north through the permafrost, but in a much larger scale. Huge cracks and craters, though I don't think they were compared to spiders.

It was a while back when I read that, so my details might not be exactly spot on.

Dan

That's the methane and CO2 coming through the thawing permafrost. They are called Araneiforms,, meaning "spider-like".