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The Mystery of the ‘Martian Spiders’

Spoiler Alert — The spiders are a geological formation, not real bugs!

Salman Hasan
Predict
3 min readApr 18, 2021

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Martian Spiders. NASA

In May of 2018, there was an interesting news item. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter clicked a photo of what looked like a bunch of spiders scurrying around near the south pole of Mars. Except there was no way these were spiders. The Orbiter was in space and the picture was from a huge distance. The so-called spiders measured 1000 km in width and don't match with any geological formation on earth! Impressed by the spider-like appearance of this geological phenomenon, scientists even termed it “araneiform terrain”. But what exactly are these and how are they formed?

The hypothesis of leaked Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

One theory around these formations is that this is due to the leakage of CO2 gas. Martian atmosphere is 95% CO2 and around the poles, the CO2 freezes into dry ice, in winters, forming a layer of thick ice. During the spring, the sun rays can pass through the translucent dry ice and warm the ground. The part of dry…

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Salman Hasan
Salman Hasan

Written by Salman Hasan

Trained scientist; Business consultant; Armchair philosopher; I write on various topics including science, climate change, startups, and business.

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