Solar burps could be linked to unexplained clouds on Mars.
In March 2012, amateur astronomers around the world reported seeing a strange plume rising 250 kilometres above the surface of the Red Planet.
An analysis published in Nature last year concluded that clouds of frozen carbon dioxide and water particles condensing in the upper atmosphere were the most likely explanation. But the trouble is that clouds don’t form that high, either on Mars or Earth.
Now a team led by David Andrews at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Uppsala, Sweden, have used data from the orbiting Mars Express spacecraft to suggest a link between this plume and the sun. Their readings show that a coronal mass ejection (CME), a burst of high-energy plasma streaming from the sun, struck Mars around the time the plume appeared.
“It’s very surprising that was affecting Mars right before the plume was first observed,” Andrews says.
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