Martian Gullies Formed By Snowboarding Dry Ice Chunks [Video]

Just a few days after NASA reported that Mars exhibited evidence it contains liquid water, NASA research shows that huge chunks of dry ice glide down Martian dunes creating springtime channels that end abruptly in a pit.

"I have always dreamed of going to Mars," said Serina Diniega, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Now I dream of snowboarding down a Martian sand dune on a block of dry ice."

The study detailing the findings and led by Diniega can be found published in the journal Icarus.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) first spotted these groves, and subsequent research in sand dunes in Utah and California confirmed that these linear gullies are not as simple as water carving out a river down a hill. The gullies form after carbon dioxide frost forms during the Martian winter. This frost then races down Martian dunes as chunks creating the linear gullies in the springtime on a hovercraft of gas created by the heating up of the dry ice.

"In debris flows, you have water carrying sediment downhill, and the material eroded from the top is carried to the bottom and deposited as a fan-shaped apron," said Diniega. "In the linear gullies, you're not transporting material. You're carving out a groove, pushing material to the sides."

What has scientists interested is that this phenomenon cannot be found on Earth. Dry ice, which is frozen carbon dioxide, does not occur naturally on our planet, and is entirely man made. Even gullies on Earth do not resemble these Martian tracks.

"MRO is showing that Mars is a very active planet," co-author of the study Candice Hansen, from the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., said. "Some of the processes we see on Mars are like processes on Earth, but this one is in the category of uniquely Martian."

Hansen did warn that this was most likely a very specific case, and should not be applied to other Martian topographical features.

"There are a variety of different types of features on Mars that sometimes get lumped together as 'gullies,' but they are formed by different processes," she said. "Just because this dry-ice hypothesis looks like a good explanation for one type doesn't mean it applies to others."