The Dry Ice Glaciers on Mars are moving at its South Pole

Dry ice flows closer to 100 times quicker than water ice in the thin atmospheres of Mars, according to recent research conducted on the planet’s high-altitude slopes. 

According to the researchers, carbon dioxide glaciers in the south polar area of Mars were used to confirm this process, and modelling implies that this migration has been occurring for the last 600,000 years. 

Observations like this have ramifications for our understanding of ice development across the universe. Earth, Mars, and Pluto have all been confirmed as having fast-flowing ice, but the non-profit Planetary Science Institute in Arizona believes the number of confirmed sites may grow in the future. 

A variety of ice exists throughout the solar system, and as the number of dwarf planets grows, it is likely that some of them will have glaciers of carbon monoxide or methane, which would be even more exotic than the dry ice glaciers recently discovered on Mars, according to NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute. 

The dry ice has grown in both volume and mass since it was initially generated more than half a billion years ago, albeit the process has been halted “by periods of mass loss via sublimation,” according to lead author Isaac Smith, a PSI research scientist, who made the announcement. (Sublimation is the process by which ice is transformed directly into gas.) 

“As Smith pointed out, “if the ice had never flowed,” the ice would still be mainly where it was first deposited, and the thickest ice layer would only be around 45 meters [147 feet] thick at its thickest point. Because it flowed downhill and into basins and spiral troughs (curvilinear basins), where it accumulated, it was able to build deposits that were up to one kilometer [0.6 miles] thick and up to one kilometer [0.6 miles] thick.” 

Using NASA’s Ice Sheet and Sea-Level System Model, which was modified to function on Mars from its present duty to follow the history of the polar ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, researchers were able to simulate the melting of the polar ice caps. That glacial activity is the major factor underlying dry ice motions on Mars, rather than atmospheric deposition, which would more uniformly distribute the dry ice across a smaller depth, was shown by the research team. 

“Ice is pouring downhill into basins in the same way that water is flowing downhill into reservoirs. The dispersion can only be explained by glacial movement”

Smith said himself. While the flow rate is believed to have peaked 400,000 years ago when deposition was at its pinnacle, the slowly receding ice cap still has an outstanding presence in terms of size. According to Smith, based on previous studies conducted by PSI senior scientist Than Putzig, the longest glacier is about 25 by 124 miles (40 by 200 kilometers) in length. 

The new research was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on Tuesday, April 25th, and is available online. Several aspects of the research were validated using terrestrial glaciers, which have characteristics such as compression ridges that have been seen on Mars. 

Edited By: Vanshika Sahu

Published By: Bhavya Dedhia

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