The Mars Express interplanetary station took an extremely strange picture of Mars in an unusual place.
The ESA interplanetary station captured strange patterns on the surface of Mars, which from above resemble spiders, writes Phys.org.
Spider spots on Mars are located in the south polar region. The dark spots are certainly not spiders. They appear on the planet when spring sunlight falls on layers of carbon dioxide frozen in the dark winter months.
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Under the influence of sunlight, ice from carbon dioxide, which lies in the lower layers, turns into a gas, it accumulates and eventually breaks through the slabs of overlying ice. The gas then pulls dark material to the surface, destroying layers of ice up to one meter thick.
Gas mixed with dark dust bursts to the surface in the form of tall fountains or geysers, which fall back down, settling on the surface.
Thus, dark spots with a diameter of 45 m to 1 km appear on the surface of Mars.
Dark spots can be seen throughout the Mars Express image, crawling like spiders across high hills and vast plateaus. But most of the dark spots are concentrated in the area on the left, which borders the part of Mars called the Inca City. This strange name for the area comes from its strange topography. The Martian Inca City is a network of ridges that truly resemble the ruins of an Inca city. This area was discovered back in 1972 by NASA’s Mariner 9 probe.
A new view of the Inca City and its arachnid “inhabitants” was taken using the Mars Express high-resolution stereo camera.
Inca city on Mars
Photo: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
Until now, planetary scientists cannot say for sure how the Inca City appeared on Mars. According to one theory, sand dunes turned to stone over time. Or magma and sand seeped through broken slabs of Martian rock. The ridges may also be associated with glaciers.
The “walls” of the Inca City are part of a large circle with a diameter of 86 km. Therefore, scientists suggest that the “city” is located inside a large crater on the surface of Mars.
Let us remind you that an object of non-Martian origin was found on the Red Planet. The Perseverance rover sent back to Earth a photo of an object similar to the famous dessert.
