They were aided by a computer model of cloud formation on the Red Planet
Mars also has Earth-like noctilucent clouds that scientists say look like coffee with cream. This conclusion was reached by the MIPT staff, who created a digital model of cloud formation on the Red Planet.
Image of Martian clouds taken in March 2021 by the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity spacecraft. The clouds are located at altitudes over 60 km and appear to be composed of particles of dry ice. < p>Silvery clouds on Earth – these are night glowing clouds, & nbsp; arising in the mesosphere at an altitude of 76 & mdash; 85 km above the Earth's surface and visible in deep twilight.
But if nitrogen and oxygen dominate in the Earth's atmosphere, on Mars 95% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide. Therefore, on Mars, an analogue of our almost 100% ice noctilucent clouds are dust clouds formed as a result of carbon dioxide condensation at altitudes of about 100 km. The size of dust particles in them is about 100 nanometers.
To study the «silver» Mars clouds are better, MIPT scientists and colleagues have developed a mathematical model that describes the mechanism of their formation and evolution. They were helped by the fact that the atmospheres of Earth and Mars have a lot in common: identical temperature profiles, the ionosphere, the mesosphere. All this gave the ability to adapt to the Martian earth model for research.
Earth noctilucent clouds
As a result, it turned out that noctilucent clouds are formed due to the condensation of vapors of supersaturated carbon dioxide on accumulations of dust «embryos»; in the atmosphere of Mars. These data were published in the journal Jetp Letters.
Scientists have also demonstrated the mechanism of cloud formation in the mesosphere of Mars. To do this, they used the Rayleigh-Taylor effect. It can be visualized using the example of coffee with cream, when a denser liquid is poured on top of a less dense liquid. Gradually «cream» (the denser, dusty carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere) make their way down, under the lower boundary of the cloud, where there is a less dense gaseous environment. Since the initial arrangement of dust particles is not the same, different layers of them absorb different amounts of carbon dioxide, which leads to mixing of layers with each other, flattening of the initial cloud of nuclei and formation of a thin layered structure of clouds.
Similar modeling of the phenomena of the Martian atmosphere helps to better interpret new data about the planet.