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![\"EarthSnap\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/earthsnap-banner-news.webp.webp\")
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A single radio trace captured high above Mars carried the unmistakable pattern of a descending electromagnetic whistle.<\/p>\n
Analyzing that signal from NASA\u2019s MAVEN spacecraft, atmospheric physicist Frantisek Nemec of Charles University<\/a> showed that it matched the radio fingerprint expected from a lightning-generated burst.<\/p>\n The brief event lasted less than half a second yet displayed the same downward sweep in frequency seen in well-known whistler signals on Earth.<\/p>\n Because only rare regions of Mars allow such signals to travel upward without fading away, the observation raises a deeper question about how often these hidden discharges occur.<\/p>\n Physics of a radio whistle<\/p>\n When an electrical discharge erupts, it releases energy across many frequencies, including very low radio waves.<\/p>\n Those waves can stretch into a whistler, a radio<\/a> tone that drops as frequencies spread out, if they climb through charged air.<\/p>\n Higher notes arrive first because they move faster through that thin charged gas, while lower ones lag behind.<\/p>\n By the time a spacecraft records the signal, a single burst has turned into the descending pattern scientists recognize.<\/p>\n Static charge on Mars<\/p>\n Dry dust can still make electricity on Mars, because grains charge<\/a> each other through constant collisions.<\/p>\n Scientists call that the triboelectric effect, charge created when grains rub together, and Mars favors it.<\/p>\n Across Mars, giant dust devils and planet-scale storms create ideal settings for charge to build.<\/p>\n That makes Martian lightning easier to accept, even without a bright flash ever appearing on camera.<\/p>\n Why Mars hides it<\/p>\n A missing global magnetic field<\/a> complicates the picture, leaving only scattered crustal patches from an older planet.<\/p>\n Near those patches, the ionosphere, the electrically charged upper air, can guide radio energy upward instead of smothering it.<\/p>\n Sunlight usually compresses that layer too tightly, so the June 2015 event had to occur just after sunset there.<\/p>\n Without that darker, thinner route and a nearly vertical field line, the signal would have died before the MAVEN spacecraft could detect it.<\/p>\n One signal among thousands<\/p>\n The team searched 108,418 wave recordings and found only one convincing event<\/a>, a hit rate that shows how narrow the window was.<\/p>\n Fewer than one percent of the snapshots came from places with the right magnetic geometry, and even fewer were on the night side.<\/p>\n Rarity, not weakness alone, may explain why Mars seemed quiet for so long and why more strikes likely escape notice.<\/p>\n Missing frequencies explained<\/p>\n Only the lower part of the burst survived, because higher frequencies faded out on the way up.<\/p>\n As the wave climbed through the plasma \u2013 a gas of free charged particles \u2013 collisions drained energy most strongly at higher frequencies.<\/p>\n That is why MAVEN saw frequencies only up to about 110 hertz, even though the original discharge was broader.<\/p>\n The missing upper half was not a contradiction, but part of the pattern that helped confirm the event.<\/p>\n True strength of the signal<\/p>\n At the spacecraft, the event looked modest, only about ten times stronger than the background noise.<\/p>\n After accounting for losses on the way up, the source itself would have rivaled a strong discharge<\/a> on Earth.<\/p>\n That estimate matters because orbiters hear only what survives the trip, not the full force released below.<\/p>\n Even so, the team still could not pin down the source to much better than about 200 miles.<\/p>\n Evidence on the ground<\/p>\n By late 2025, Perseverance had already supplied a second line of evidence, hearing crackles from tiny discharges in dust events.<\/p>\n Those surface recordings captured 55 electrical events<\/a>, usually during dust devils or dust storms around the rover.<\/p>\n Seen together, the rover and orbiter results point to a range of Martian electrical activity, from local sparks to stronger bursts.<\/p>\n That broader picture makes the new whistle easier to place, because it no longer stands alone.<\/p>\n Chemistry after the spark<\/p>\n Electrical discharges do more than make noise, because they can break apart simple gases and help build new molecules.<\/p>\n That possibility sits behind prebiotic chemistry, the chemical steps before living cells, which asks how simple ingredients could turn into larger ones.<\/p>\n The 1953 Miller experiment<\/a> showed that electric discharges could produce amino acids from simple starting gases under lab conditions.<\/p>\n Mars is still far from proven habitable, but every verified spark adds one more process researchers must count.<\/p>\n What this changes<\/p>\n Across orbit and ground observations, Mars now looks less electrically quiet and more like a world where dust, air, and magnetism still interact.<\/p>\n Future missions with better wave coverage could show how often that happens, where it happens, and whether the chemistry matters.<\/p>\n The study is published in Science Advances<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read?\u00a0Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>\u00a0for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on\u00a0EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by\u00a0Eric Ralls<\/a>\u00a0and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have recorded the first electric whistle from Mars, a faint radio signal produced by a lightning-like atmospheric…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-324843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}