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The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula

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Signs of spiders from Mars | ESA (www.esa.int)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago

Rather than being actual spiders, these small, dark features form when spring sunshine falls on layers of carbon dioxide deposited over the dark winter months. The sunlight causes carbon dioxide ice at the bottom of the layer to turn into gas, which subsequently builds up and breaks through slabs of overlying ice. The gas bursts free in martian springtime, dragging dark material up to the surface as it goes and shattering layers of ice up to a metre thick.