Take a look at the strange polygons that NASA photographed on Mars. Where did they come from?

Although of course there are no four seasons in our sense of the word, the hidden reservoirs of underground ice touch the dry Martian surface, creating strange patterns.

These are carried out by scientists from the University of Arizona, which manages the HIRISE mission.

Fans look like a flower garden thanks to the wind

The vents through which gas escapes are the reason for the “bloom” of the planet. The gas itself carries with it fine particles of material from the surface.

These particles then further disintegrate and erode the channels.

Their particles then fall to the surface in dark fan-shaped deposits, or sink into dry ice. In the places where the fans originally settled, then these particles leave bright traces.

After that, the vent itself closes, but only for a moment to open again.

Thanks to this, we can then see two or more fans coming out of the same place.

However, because the wind is blowing on Mars, according to the changes in the direction of the wind, these fans are also differently turned and oriented, so that they look like tiny flowers.

We can look at them thanks to the image from March 30, 2022, which reveals this mosaic of white zigzags.

Both fans and polygons can hold on for many years and slowly deform the Martian landscape as the ice expands and shrinks seasonally.

“Both water and dry ice play a significant role in shaping the surface of Mars at high latitudes,” the researchers wrote.

“Water ice frozen in the soil divides the soil into polygons.”

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