I remember lightning being talked about on here by some as possible
causes for some the surface features on mars, but this is new news to me:)


Betsy Sinkey wrote:
>
>
> I have been seeing articles about lightning on Mars lately claiming
> this is some new discovery. (????? See the article below.) Didn't we
> discuss known lightning on Mars a couple of years ago here on this
> forum? Why is old news being recycled as new? Anyone else notice this?
> Betsy
>
>
> Martian lightning
> In a dust storm, scientists find the first direct evidence of
> electrical discharge on Mars
> By Jenny Lauren Lee
> <http://www.sciencenews.org/view/authored/id/123/name/Jenny_Lauren_Lee>
> Web edition : Monday, June 22nd, 2009
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> access
> <http://www.sciencenews.org/view/access/id/44892/name/je_mars_dustdevil.jpg>
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<http://www.sciencenews.org/view/access/id/44892/title/je_mars_dustdevil.jpg>mag\
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> Electrical dustLightning has been detected for the first time on Mars,
> and it may look something like this artist’s illustration. Bits of
> debris in a dust devil rub against one another and then discharge,
> causing a faint glow like the one at the bottom of the
> image.University of Michigan
>
> Scientists say they have seen the first direct evidence of lightning
> on Mars, in the form of electrical discharges during a Martian dust storm.
>
> The finding has implications for human travel to the Red Planet and
> for studying possible origins of life on Mars, the authors say in a
> paper to appear in /Geophysical Research Letters/.
>
> It has been thought that lightning might be possible on Mars. Bits of
> dust rubbing against each other in one of the planet’s famous dust
> devils could charge up the particles the same way that running on a
> carpet charges up socks. All that charge could then be discharged in a
> zap, either as lightning or a shock.
>
> But catching Martian lightning in the act was difficult: The lightning
> bursts were too small to distinguish from the energy emanating from
> the planet itself. And the dust storms themselves obscured the faint
> glow that might have been visible from just above the red planet.
>
> To “see” the lightning, researchers from the University of Michigan
> and colleagues used a new detector that can distinguish microwave
> radiation emanating from natural objects like dirt and rocks from a
> burst of lightning. Radiation from natural objects, including Martian
> rocks, is relatively constant; radiation from lightning displays
> changes in the distribution of frequencies of light.
>
> Using a 34-meter-diameter radio telescope in the California desert,
> for about five hours a day for 12 days between May 22 and June 16,
> 2006, the researchers found no signs of the variable radiation, except
> during a period of two or three hours. At that time a Martian dust
> storm was on the side of Mars facing the scientists’ detector. “Every
> time we moved off Mars the [signal] went away. Then we moved it back
> and it came back again,” says Christopher Ruf of the University of
> Michigan in Ann Arbor, one of the study’s authors.
>
> Lightning as an explanation for the results makes sense, says
> geophysicist Phil Christensen of Arizona State University in Tempe. “I
> can’t think of a better explanation,” he says. “They found it to be in
> a dust storm, and that’s exactly where you’d expect it.”
>
> Lightning on Mars is probably fainter and more diffuse than the
> lightning commonly observed on Earth, says Nilton Renno, another
> author of the study. “The atmosphere [on Mars] is much less dense,” he
> says. Instead of forks of lightning, Martian lightning bursts would
> cover a wider area and would have a “faint glow” like the light in a
> neon tube.
>
>