Despite the importance of sand and dust to Mars geomorphology, weather, and exploration, the processes that move sand and that raise dust to maintain Mars' ubiquitous dust haze and to produce dust storms have not been well quantified in situ, with missions lacking either the necessary sensors or a sufficiently active aeolian environment. Perseverance rover's novel environmental sensors and Jezero crater's dusty environment remedy this. In Perseverance's first 216 sols, four convective vortices raised dust locally, while, on average, four passed the rover daily, over 25% of which were significantly dusty ("dust devils").
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is evidence that life on Earth originated in cold saline waters around scorching hydrothermal vents, and that similar conditions might exist or have existed on Mars, Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus, and other worlds. Could potentially habitable complex brines with extremely low freezing temperatures exist in the shallow subsurface of these frigid worlds? Earth, Mars, and carbonaceous chondrites have similar bulk elemental abundances, but while the Earth is depleted in the most volatile elements, the Icy Worlds of the outer solar system are expected to be rich in them. The cooling of ionic solutions containing substances that likely exist in the Icy Worlds could form complex brines with the lowest eutectic temperature possible for the compounds available in them.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Evidence for deliquescence of perchlorate salts has been discovered in the Martian polar region while possible brine flows have been observed in the equatorial region. This appears to contradict the idea that bulk deliquescence is too slow to occur during the short periods of the Martian diurnal cycle during which conditions are favorable for it. We conduct laboratory experiments to study the formation of liquid brines at Mars environmental conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe crystal structures of the title compounds, ammonium risedronate dihydrate, NH4+.C7H10NO7P2-.2H2O, (I), and potassium risedronate dihydrate, K+.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA series of new sulfur heteroarenes, isoelectronic with dibenzo[g,p]chrysene, have been prepared by double photocyclization of the corresponding tetraaryl substituted ethenes. The first step proceeds efficiently in each case, and the corresponding intermediate sulfur heteroarenes, isoelectronic with phenanthrene, have been isolated. The second ring closure is only efficient when one of the participating aryl substituents is thienyl, which thus manifests a higher electron density on the carbon atom involved in the excited singlet state reaction.
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