EUGENE, Ore. – February 19, 2021 – A collision caused by dry Martian dust particles could contact each other to produce electricity transmission at the surface and atmosphere of the planet, according to University of Oregon researchers .
However, such sparks are likely to be small and pose little threat to future robotic or human missions to the red planet, they report in a paper published online and expected to appeared in the March 15 print issue of the magazine Icarus.
Since then Viking astronauts in the 1970s and orbiters have discovered silts, clays, wind-blown bedrocks and a dust devil on Mars, raising questions about possible electrical activity.
Scientists have tried to experimentally determine whether large electric and electric storms were possible and whether static electricity was generated by fragments of the planet’s basaltic rock carriages or, ultimately, danger to humans.
Using volcanic ash as a stopping place for Martian dust, researchers at UO Laboratory volcanologist Josef Dufek discovered that electric discharges are possible in Martian dust demons and storms. However, the small emissions with weak electric fields, nearly 20 thousand volts per meter, are likely to be supported by a Martian atmosphere.
Earth’s atmosphere, by contrast, can withstand electric fields reaching 3 megavolts per meter, triggering spectacular lightning storms that are common and sometimes deadly in the southeastern United States, said Joshua Méndez Harper , a research engineer at the Oregon Volcanology Center in the Earth Department. Sciences.
“Our experiments, and those of others ahead of us, show that it is easy to find sparks on Mars when you cause sand or dust,” said Méndez Harper. “However, it may be difficult, even in major dust storms or inside a dust demon, to get a normal large or lightning discharge because Martian feeling is bad for cost storage. “
Such triboelectric or pathological processes are often seen on Earth with socks sliding across a carpet and then rubbing against a doorknob or sticking a balloon on a window after rubbing on human hair.
Martian dust demons may seem to glow, crack or shine as they traverse the abstract landscape of Mars but with an outbreak perhaps as small as that they will only be visible through the detection of their radio waves.
Previous tests to determine whether spark transmission could occur were inconclusive because grains were inverted in such a way that they communicated with the walls of the test fields. Some experiments used fragments of materials not found on Mars. These connections may have led to an unusual cost in a Martian dust storm.
“We decided to find out if the sparks seen in previous works represented Mars or just experimental artifacts,” said Méndez Harper.
At the UO, Méndez Harper, Dufek and George McDonald, a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University, found around the wall exposure limit using a vertical glass tube similar in size to a water bottle about 4 inches in diameter. -dimensions and 8 inches long.
They created triboelectric charges by crushing fragments of basalt ash from the Xitle volcanic eruption in Mexico about 2,000 years ago.
Accidents in the seal tubes occurred at breakage rates that were expected to occur at light Martian winds, without the grains rubbing against the outer walls and in an atmospheric pressure of 8 millibars of carbon two. -oxide, similar to those found on the surface of Martin.
The Mexican basalt used in the project is similar to Martian basalt, as found by rovers in Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rover missions and the dust analogs developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
By comparison, the research team conducted experiments in which the grains were allowed to communicate with an alien surface to expected conditions on Mars. Sparks occurred in both sets of experiments, but the addition of an artificial wall altered the polarity of the emissions.
“We were interested in pursuing this work because of the number of new missions to Mars and the ability to block ideas,” said Dufek, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences. and director of the Oregon Volcanology Center. “Behavioral measurement and dispersion influence the transport of dust in the atmosphere and have long been studied in terms of altering chemical reactivity, including organic synthesis. “
NASA’s Mars mission that landed on Feb. 18 involves a Perseverance rover and an Ingenuity robotic helicopter.
The low energy of scattering on Mars as revealed by the new experiments means that these effects are unlikely to affect mechanical activity, Dufek said.
Nonetheless, the Jezero crater, the landing site for Sustainability, seems to experience regular dust storms in the fall and winter. That, McDonald said, could provide opportunities for looking at electronic miracles.
One of the goals of the Sustainability mission is to assess past environmental conditions. Evidence for a more meaningful feeling in the past would affect the planet’s electrical environment and how it has changed over time.
“The big takeaway from this study is that Mars could be an electronically active space, although it is in very different ways than Earth,” Dufek said. “Because Mars’ analogue dust is easily rising to the point of release even when grains did not rub against other landlords which means that future settlers could find a world altered by static electricity in ways cunning. “
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The research was funded by the National Science Foundation through a grant to Dufek. Méndez Harper was supported by the Blue Waters Graduate Fellowship.
Links:
About Josef Dufek: https: /
Department of Earth Sciences: https: /
Oregon Volcanology Center: https: /
About Blue Waters: https: /