Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
Those dark streaks sliding down Martian hills? They’ve long been mistaken for signs of flowing water. But a new study says it’s all just dust—no liquid, no life, just wind-triggered avalanches.
Machine learning has scoured Mars and come to a dry conclusion: slope streaks aren’t trails of salty water—they’re the footprints of cascading dust, dislodged by winds or tiny impacts.
We’ve been chasing ghosts since the 1970s, when Viking images first showed those dark lines. Now, after half a century, scientists are rewriting that mystery with 21st-century tools—and it’s dust, not destiny.
Using over 500,000 streaks across 86,000 images, AI didn’t just assist—it led the way. The algorithm cracked a global pattern hidden in plain sight, linking the streaks to dust flow, not hydration.
The dream of current Martian water takes a hit. The RSLs, once considered the best evidence of flowing brines, now fall outside the temperature and humidity zones needed to support even salty liquid.
This dry revelation means future Mars missions can steer clear of “special regions” once feared to host life. Less risk of contamination, more freedom to explore—with less planetary guilt.
Wind, not water, is the real sculptor of Mars’ modern landscape. It kicks up dust, triggers landslides, and paints patterns we once misread as microbial invitations.
If there’s no flowing water in today’s Mars, there’s little room for life as we know it. The Red Planet grows colder, drier, and less inviting with every new dataset.
This study didn’t find water—but it found clarity. With planetary-scale machine learning, scientists are finally sifting through Mars’ illusions and getting to the geological truth.
Credit: ESA