Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to The Geysers Of Mars

This version of the story...
alcaray — (archived)

...has it that the dust is deposited throughout the yearly deposition of frost. But that over the Martian year, the dust migrates lower in the ice and concentrates into a layer covered by clear ice.

Or to quote it directly: This seasonal deposit begins as a layer of dusty CO2 frost. Over the winter, the frost recrystalizes and becomes denser, a process called annealing. The dust and sand particles caught in the frost slowly sink. By spring, with the Sun about to rise, the frost layer has become a slab of semi-transparent ice about 3 feet thick, lying on a substrate of dark sand and dust."

Can it really work like that? If I sprinkle graphite on an ice cube in my freezer, will it move to the bottom of the cube in a year? Or maybe I would need to make it crushed ice. Still...?

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