Spring is geyser time on Mars

On spring days on Mars, powerful geysers sometimes spew carbon dioxide "steam" and dust to great heights, a phenomenon unlike anything ever seen on earth, scientists said on Tuesday.

These eruptions can be so strong that the falling dirt creates fan-shaped patterns extending hundreds of yards metres. "Here's a place that looks wildly different than anything on Earth," NASA scientist Candice Hansen said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Mars and Earth are similar in that both are small, rocky planets with seasons caused by tilts in their axes, although the Martian year is twice as long as ours. But the seasonal geysers illustrate one result of their vast differences in climate.




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