Space & Astronomy

Mystery of dark streaks on Mars may have finally been solved

By T.K. Randall
May 20, 2025 ·  5 comments

An example of the streaks on Mars. Image Credit: NASA First spotted back in the 1970s by NASA's Viking spacecraft, these strange, dark, snake-like patterns - which can stretch for hundreds of feet - have been the topic of heated debate.

Some of the streaks appear to have remained unchanged on Mars for years, while others have been seen to appear and disappear within a single season.

By far the most widely debated possibility is that the streaks are created by water - either running on the surface or seeping through from underground.

If the water happened to be extremely salty, that could also explain how it might survive at or near the surface.

Now, however, a new study has cast doubt on the idea that the streaks have anything to do with water at all - findings which, if correct, would represent a considerable blow to the search for water on Mars. "A big focus of Mars research is understanding modern-day processes on Mars - including the possibility of liquid water on the surface," said Adomas Valantinas of Brown University.

"Our study reviewed these features but found no evidence of water."

"Our model favors dry formation processes."

The research, which involved analyzing tens of thousands of images of the streaks, suggests that these anomalous surface features are caused by little more than wind and dust.

"Once we had this global map, we could compare it to databases and catalogs of other things like temperature, wind speed, hydration, rockslide activity, and other factors," said fellow researcher Valentin Bickel of the University of Bern.

"Then we could look for correlations across hundreds of thousands of cases to better understand the conditions under which these features form."

Source: Space.com | Comments (5)

Tags: Mars