Ars Technica reported that researchers have for the first time successfully modeled how the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud forms near the Martian volcano Arsia Mons. Jorge Hernández-Bernal, a planetary scientist at Paris’ Sorbonne Université, led the team. The thin cloud can grow to over 1,000 miles long before dissipating.
The formation appears every morning near Arsia Mons during Martian spring and summer, then dissipates, repeating the cycle for months, according to Ars Technica. It is over 1,000 miles long, a distance the outlet compared to the trip from New York City to Kansas City. Scientists commonly call the feature the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud, or AMEC, a name tied to the nearby volcano. A probe first recorded the cloud in 2018.
According to the model results, the cloud may be powered by an atmospheric physical process that has not been directly observed on any planet, Ars Technica reports. Scientists had no plausible explanation for the cloud from its first recording in 2018 until the recent modeling effort. Hernández-Bernal said in a press release that researchers needed to include exotic physics found in textbooks but treated as theoretical and usually thought not to occur in nature. He characterized that physics as textbook material treated as theoretical rather than something observed in nature.
After the team added that physics to its simulations, the AMEC emerged as expected, Hernández-Bernal said. “Once we included this physics in our simulations, the AMEC emerged just as we hoped.”
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