Martian Glaciers

On Earth, glaciers slide on lubricating layers of water, leaving complex landscapes like fjords and drumlins in their wake. Mars — though once home to enormous ice masses — lacks those geological features. Scientists assumed, therefore, that Martian ice stayed frozen and unmoving. But a new study demonstrates that is not the case.

Researchers used computational modeling to simulate two identical glaciers: one under Earth-like conditions and one under the lower gravity of Mars. They found that Martian glaciers did indeed move, but Mars’s lower gravity, combined with better water drainage beneath the ice, meant that they moved exceedingly slowly. Martian glaciers did erode the landscape but into different features than on Earth. Instead of forming moraines and drumlins, a large Martian glacier would instead carve channels and eskar ridges, geological features found on Mars today. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech/Uni. of Arizona; research credit: A. Grau Galofre et al.; via AGU; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)