Possible present day habitats for life on Mars (Including potential Mars special regions): Difference between revisions

{{Wide image|PIA15295 Bridges 2-br2.gif|600 px|Advancing Dune in Nili Patera, Mars. Back-and-forth blinking of this two-image animation shows movement of a sand dune on Mars. This discovery shows that entire dunes as thick as 200 feet (61 meters) are moving as coherent units across the Martian landscape. The sand dunes move at about the same flux (volume per time) dunes in Antarctica. This was unexpected because of the thin air and the winds which are weaker than Earth winds. It may be due to "saltation" - ballistic movement of sand grains which travel further in the weaker Mars gravity.<br><br> The lee fronts of the dunes in this region move on average 0.5 meters per years (though the selection may be biased here as they only measured dunes with clear lee edges to measure) and the ripples move on average 0.1 meters per year.<ref name="BridgesAyoub2012">{{cite journal|url=bridgesetal2012_sandfluxeshttps://authors.library.caltech.edu/31870/2/nature11022-s1.pdf|last1=Bridges|first1=N. T.|last2=Ayoub|first2=F.|last3=Avouac|first3=J-P.|last4=Leprince|first4=S.|last5=Lucas|first5=A.|last6=Mattson|first6=S.|title=Earth-like sand fluxes on Mars|journal=Nature|volume=485|issue=7398|year=2012|pages=339–342|issn=0028-0836|doi=10.1038/nature11022|pmid=22596156|bibcode=2012Natur.485..339B}}</ref><br><br>The idea of the advancing sand dunes bioreactor is that this movement of the sand dunes could "mix oxidants, reductants, water, nutrients, and possibly organic carbon in what could be considered bioreactors"<ref name=sanddunesbioreactor/>}}