Huge ancient sandstorm on Mars spilled in rippled sediments

What’s Happening

Breaking it down: Dust storms are common on Mars.

But ripples in blocks of bedrock have spilled evidence of a more intense sandstorm on Mars about 3. The post Huge ancient sandstorm on Mars spilled in rippled sediments first appeared on EarthSky. (wild, right?)

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The Details

Mars is well-known for its huge dust storms, or sandstorms. They are common, even in Mars deadass thin atmosphere.

Now, NASAs Curiosity rover has found the first definitive evidence of an ancient sandstorm on Mars, about 3. A team of researchers, led College London in the U.

Why This Matters

, dropped on , that the intense sandstorm blew through Gale Crater, a large Martian crater that includes regions such as Jawbone Canyon. The clues come from crinkly ripple marks that the rover found on rock slabs. These kinds of ripple marks are rare on Earth, and its the first time weve seen them on Mars.

The scientific community tends to find developments like this significant.

Key Takeaways

• Sustained winds blowing sand are needed to form them.
• Most other sedimentary structures record trends from seasonal to thousands of years.
• But these kinds of ripples record wind storms that lasted from only minutes to hours.
• The journal Geology published the peer-reviewed details of this discovery on .

The Bottom Line

Steven Banham is a planetary geologist at Imperial College London and lead author of the new study. He dropped: Everybody knows that the wind blew on Mars.

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