What is it about?
Did you know that megaripples in Mars are larger than in Earth? This paper describes the largest megaripples on Earth that have sizes comparable to Martian ones. These bedforms generated by strong winds allowed to defy present day mechanical models, suggesting that instead being related to the "impact theory" as ripples, their origin might be related to ondulatory instabilities associated to the drag of the flow of fluids of different densities, as some clouds tend to form.
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Why is it important?
These features are important because they witnessed an epoch with much stronger wind regimes, probably not recorded anywhere in the present epoch. Understanding them is a way to be prepared to an unknown future associated to this ongoing climate change
Perspectives
These megaripples compose a natural lab: they can serve to define the effects of very strong winds on artificial structures. If Mars colonization is intended, surface structures shold be installed first in a place like this to understand the impact of strong winds and particularily the saltation curtain that as we showed later, transport an important amount of gravel until 1.5 m high, today.
Juan Pablo Milana
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Largest wind ripples on Earth?, Geology, April 2009, Geological Society of America,
DOI: 10.1130/g25382a.1.
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