@joelvanderwerf@mastodon.social
2026-10-07 20:49 UTC
@petergleick@fediscience.org Huh, I wonder why the hypothesis isn't:
High wind hits the summit of Arsia Mons, which is covered with a thick layer of frost, sending frost particles into the upper atmosphere where water vapor nucleates around them.
That would still be heterogeneous nucleation rather than the mysterious homogeneous kind.
I'm not a climate scientist or physicist, but that just seems like a place to apply occam's razor.
Replies (1)
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@petergleick@fediscience.org 2026-10-07 22:04
@joelvanderwerf@mastodon.social Joel, I don't know, but here's the actual scientific paper. Perhaps they address this explicitly: Hernández-Bernal, J., Määttänen, A., Spiga, A., & Forget, F. (2026). Homogeneous ice nucleation from water vapour suggested by elongated clouds on Mars. Nature Geoscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-026-02089-9