In 1976, NASA's Viking mission successfully landed on its first spacecraft on Mars. When the mission began sending images to Earth from the surface of Mars, scientists pointed out that there were long dark stripes on the crater walls and cliff sides. Until today, some researchers believe that strange geographical features are the result of water flow, but a recent study says.
Planetary scientists at Brown and University of Bern use artificial intelligence to reveal that the strange Martian stripes may be caused by wind and dust rather than water flow. Their results are of great significance to future Mars exploration and the continued search for human beings for their living environment and life outside the Earth.
Some slopes are durable, while others (RSL) are shorter, constantly appearing at the same location during the hottest period of the year. Although Mars is usually dry and cold (temperatures as low as -225 degrees Fahrenheit, or -153 degrees Celsius -153 degrees Celsius), from potential ice, underground sources, or humidity, it can be mixed with enough salt to become a liquid and flow toward the slope. Because water is a key element of life on Earth, this formation may also represent habitable areas on the Red Planet. But some researchers don't believe that the drying process may create these functions.
To address this, researchers detailed the algorithms on the confirmed slope attractions dataset in a study published Monday in the journal Nature Communications. They then used the algorithm to scan over 86,000 high-resolution satellite images and formed a map of the slopes of Mars.
“Once we have obtained this global map, we can compare it to databases and directories of other things, such as temperature, wind speed, hydration, rock sliding activity and other factors,” Valentin Bickel, co-author of the study, said in a statement from Brown University. “We can then look for the correlations of hundreds of thousands of cases to better understand the conditions under which these traits form.”
In short, their results do not associate slope stripes and RSL with features indicating liquids or even frost. Instead, the researchers found that both slope streaks and RSL tend to develop in areas with high wind speeds and dust deposits. In other words, they are likely caused by a drying process, in which the dust layer suddenly slides onto the slope, triggered by external forces.
Planetary scientists explain that this study can still bring weight to future Mars exploration, rather than viewing these results as another failure in our search for alien life. If their research confirms the theory that the slope is caused by water, so the area may have some form of life, NASA actually temporarily avoids the area. This is because scientists fear that spacecraft and wanderers may still have terrestrial life, such as microorganisms, which could pollute Martian habitat and interfere with our search for Martian life.
“This is the advantage of this big data approach,” explains Adomas Valantinas, another co-author of the study, a planetary scientist at Brown University. “It helps us to exclude some assumptions about orbit before sending spacecraft exploration.”
In an industry that seems obsessed with water on Mars, this study reminds people that not every scientific breakthrough needs to be related to alien life.
