Mysterious New Gully Spotted on Mars

The two photographs were taken over a Martian year apart.
Thought this was interesting...passing along the info.

The powerful HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) imaged the channel, which is found on the slope of a crater wall in the Red Planet's mid-southern latitudes, on May 25, 2013. The feature was not present in HiRISE photos of the area taken on Nov. 5, 2010. NASA unveiled the image on Wednesday (March 19).

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A new gully has appeared on a sloped crater wall on Mars. The channel, which was absent from images in November 2010 but showed up in a May 2013 photo, does not appear to have been formed by water. Exactly what caused this Red Planet rivulet remains a mystery.

When I fist saw the title of the article water came to mind..but if not water, what?

Though it looks water-carved, the gully is much more likely to have been formed when carbon dioxide frost accumulated on the slope and grew heavy enough to avalanche down and drag material down with it

carbon dioxide?

The gullies resemble rivers here on earth. Beautiful.

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Carbon dioxide slippage could well be it, here's some photo's of that in action on Mars, but these were on cliff like slopes where it is dropping (almost) straight down. This shows a fluidity about it's shape, winding, carving... Hmmm interesting.

That's a cool find, I love pictures that show change in the alien terrain over time.

Here's the official source, with an interactive image and links to the high-res images: www.nasa.gov...

A more recent image (2 Sep 2013) can be found here: hirise.lpl.arizona.edu...



And yes, loose solid material flowing downslope can behave like a liquid.

reply to post by Qumulys


Haha, those picture made me dizzy for some reason.