Mysterious Spirals on Mars! We’re gonna have to science the shit out of this.

It’s 2011. I’m a first year graduate student that has just found a mysterious set of features tucked away in one of the thousands of high-resolution photographs of the Martian surface. Click here for part one of the story.

Everyone of course has those crazy initial thoughts. “Did I just discover an alien civilization?” It brings back memories of the infamous “Face on Mars” that was uncovered in old Viking orbiter photos, only to later be debunked by updated images by modern satellites. I remember seeing photos of it as a kid in some magazine, and it gave me nightmares.

Viking orbiter photo. Credit: NASA

Mars global surveyor MOC camera. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS

So of course I am wondering this. But then again, there are lots of spiraled things in nature. Spirals can form in just about any fluid or semi-fluid medium when there are shear stresses (Google keyword: Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability). If you hold a ball between the palms of your two hands and move your hands past each other, the ball will rotate. Same basic principle.

Now a proper scientist avoids immediately jumping to conclusions. I’m doing my best to do just that. I have several observations that need to be explained.

• The spirals (obviously)
• The smoother patterned ground on which the spirals are found
• The rougher terrain adjacent to the patterned terrain

It is a simple observation that the two major types of terrain in this area (the patterned type and the rougher type) are “crusts” of some sort that moved atop a fluid medium. Take a look at these jigsaw fits:

Cerberus Palus, Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/ASU/UofA/MSSS (annotations by @andyinspace)

Do you see how the patterns connect here? The oval piece in the middle moved. HiRISE: ESP_00725_1840 Credit: NASA/JPL/UofA/MSSS

Well… lava flows are known to form crusts on their surfaces almost immediately after being exposed. But you could also have something like pack ice on an ocean.

Lava "plates" on a dammed up portion of a lava flow in Hawaii. Credit: google/DigitalGlobe

Image credit: Flickr user Endlisnis

The patterned ground: again, this is found in both volcanic and icy locations. Muddy locations too! Lava polygons form on the surface of stagnated lava flows and lava lakes. Permafrost polygons form in frozen soil due to expansion and contraction from season to season.

Patterned terrain in Athabasca Valles, Mars. The topographic highs on right right look like they were surrounded and almost flooded. Credit: NASA/JPL/UofA/MSSS

Post-eruption surface of Makaopuhi lava lake, Kileauea, Hawaii. Polygonal cracks formed following the last crustal foundering episode on March 19, 1965. Darker areas are islands of crust. (Fig. 2 from Wright and Okamura 1977)

But the spirals? Well, it turns out that there are spiral features that are known to form on lava flows. They’re called lava coils (although different volcanologists have different names for them).

Hawaiian lava coils. Credit: @andyinspace

10 m diameter lava coil forming. USGS photo by Elliot Endo - J. P. Lockwood et al., U.S. Geol. Surv. Prof. Pap. 1613, p. 14 (2000).

For more information about how the Martian spirals likely form, I strongly encourage you to watch this video and visit the source here. I intend to discuss it in more detail in a related post at some point.

Ok, back to the story. At this point I think I have it all figured out. I present this research in one of my classes at the end of the semester. After concluding my presentation, our professor chuckles and say “You need to submit this to Science or Nature. Yesterday.” I thought “holy shit." Words came out of my mouth, but my 22 year old brain was not available.

To be continued....

-Andy