September 17, 2000

PLANETARY SCIENCE:
'Spiders' Channel Mars Polar Ice Cap

Richard A. Lovett

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND--Scientists studying the latest high-resolution
photos of the martian south polar ice cap think they may have found
additional clues to its ebb and flow. These hints of the planet's bizarre
atmosphere come from a new class of dramatic-looking terrain features
whose dark, multilimbed, vaguely radial designs have earned them the
moniker "black spiders," and another group of dusky, spreading
features called "dark fans." At a recent gathering here of Mars
researchers, a planetary scientist proposed that the
spiders might be subsurface gas channels, visible through an unusually
transparent section of the martian ice.