Morning frost has been discovered forming on mountains on Mars, something that was previously believed to be impossible.
Scientists have confirmed that morning frost – formed from water ice – forms on Martian mountains, which are the tallest in the Solar System. Some of the mountains are three times the height of Mount Everest, with Mars being home to the tallest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons.
Martian mountains are normally extinct volcanoes, and the frost forms in the volcanic craters and calderas.
Adomas Valantinas, a planetary scientist at the University of Berne in Switzerland and Brown University in the United States, was quoted as saying: ‘It’s the first time we’ve discovered water frost on the volcano summits and the first time we’ve discovered water frost in the equatorial regions of Mars.’
Frost had previously been found on the planet’s north and south poles, but never around the equatorial regions. Scientists believed that frost would not form close to the equator, but this discovery shows these assumptions were wrong.
[Image: Aynur Zakirov from Pixabay]