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The Perils of Martian Storms
Thu Sep 29, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
The perils of Martian storms, coming up next on The Weather Notebook.
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Yesterday, we looked at the
connection between Martian Dust Devils and lightning. Today, correspondent Chris
Richard expands on that, and some other hazards NASA scientists might find in a dust
storm on the red planet.
Here on earth, they’re no big deal, those little dancing spirals of dust, but on Mars, dust
devils might be very dangerous to human and machine alike. For one thing, explains
planetary scientist Michael Hecht, Martian dust and sand is different from
ours.
“When you walk on the beach, you’re walking on ground-up glass. And it only feels
pleasant because it’s all been washed by the water and the wind to take off all the
rough edges. When you go to Mars, where you don’t have all the weathering that nature
provides on earth, this is really nasty stuff.”
So, picture a swirling cloud of razor-edged glass shards.
While the atmospheric currents that drive them are scarcely strong enough to knock
over a lawn chair, the swirling dust could infiltrate delicate machine parts. And another
danger – researchers have already shown that earthly dust devils have static electricity
charges strong enough to knock out a computer. The Martian version, forming in low
gravity and thin atmosphere, might be big enough to generate something like lightning.
Michael Hecht:
“So any process involved in moving dust around, in making it electrically charged, is
potentially a very dangerous process for humans.”
It could be decades before human explorers have to face such dangers, but Hecht
hopes that soon, an unmanned mission will include specialized equipments to track
and observe the Martian dust devils up close.
Chris Richard reports from Los Angeles. The Weather Notebook is supported by the
National Science Foundation, and Subaru of America.
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