Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to To each his own

re: To each his own
Greg Orme — (archived)

There are some problems with the geyser interpretation of this image. One is the image is taken from above and so the geysers would have to be shooting out at an extreme angle to be seen in the image. If they went straight up only a dark dot would be seen.
Also if a geyser was putting out this much material then in a matter of hours it would be enough to pool together into one large dark stain. It appears like a Kodak Moment as if the geysers all happened to start at the same time just as the camera passed overhead, and no previous geysers had ever stained the ice.
Blocks of ice are also unlikely in this area. The simplest explanation is the dark spots are dark dust, perhaps from below ground. There are plenty of known dark spots on the poles. Another explanation is as the ice sublimates small spots of dark soil become exposed. This is common on the north pole. Once the dark material is exposed it could be blown about by the wind, also common on the pole.
Since the wind changes at the pole according to whether the CO2 is sublimating or freezing this wind would change direction and stay in that direction for a long time. So the streaks could just be dark dust blown off the spots with a long term prevailing wind in two directions, first at spring then in autumn. The angle between the two streaks could be from the terrain channeling the wind directions. The wind must be channeled like this in many polar areas from different amounts of CO2 sublimating, temperature differences, etc. Some images show large differences in streak directions even a few kilometers apart.

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