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To better understand these reactions, Wang's team, which includes researchers from six universities in the United States, China, and the United Kingdom, studied the isotopic makeup of chlorine, oxygen, and carbon produced by these discharges. They found a consistent depletion of heavier isotopes across all three elements.

"Because isotopes are minor constituents in materials, the isotopic ratios can only be affected by the MAJOR process in a system. Therefore, the substantial heavy isotope depletion of three mobile elements is a 'smoking-gun' that nails down the importance of dust-induced electrochemistry in shaping the contemporary Mars surface-atmosphere system," says Wang.

These isotopic patterns act like fingerprints, pointing to dust-driven electrochemistry as a dominant force shaping Mars today.

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Author: NASA/Reid Wiseman

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The Lagoon Nebula is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region. Discovered by Giovanni Battista Hodierna before 1654, it is one of only two star-forming nebulae faintly visible to the naked eye from mid-northern latitudes. While appearing pink in long-exposure photographs, it typically appears gray when viewed through binoculars or telescopes due to the human eye's limited color sensitivity in low-light conditions. In the foreground is the open cluster NGC 6530.

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile has captured this richly detailed new image of the Lagoon Nebula. This giant cloud of gas and dust is creating intensely bright young stars, and is home to young stellar clusters. This image is a tiny part of just one of eleven public surveys of the sky now in progress using ESO telescopes. Together these are providing a vast legacy of publicly available data for the global astronomical community.

Author: European Southern Observatory / VLT Survey Telescope team

CC BY 4.0

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