\tScience & Exploration<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t12\/11\/2025
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Travelling up from Mars\u2019s equator towards its north pole, we find Coloe Fossae: a set of intriguing scratches within a region marked by deep valleys, speckled craters, and signs of an ancient ice age.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe patterns of Coloe Fossae. Click on the image to zoom in and explore in more detail.<\/a><\/p>\n Earth isn\u2019t the only planet to go through ice ages.\u00a0A handful have hit our home planet in the last 2.5 billion years, with the most recent \u2013 which peaked around 20 000 years ago \u2013 taking Earth\u2019s average temperature down to around 7\u201310 \u00b0C (up to 8 \u00b0C cooler than today).<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tMap of Coloe Fossae in context<\/a><\/p>\n Ice ages are an entirely separate phenomenon to more recent human-caused global warming. They are part of an ancient geological rhythm primarily caused by changes in a planet\u2019s path around the Sun and the wobble of its rotational axis. During an ice age, ice is more widespread in the form of glaciers and ice sheets, and fluctuating temperatures enable flows of ice to advance and retreat across the globe.<\/p>\n We see the telltale signs of previous ice ages on other planets, too \u2013 their impact on modern-day Mars is evident in these new images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on\u00a0ESA\u2019s Mars Express<\/a>.<\/p>\n The roughly parallel lines slicing diagonally through the image are known as Coloe Fossae,\u00a0a feature created as alternating chunks of ground fell away<\/a>. Many craters, formed as incoming space rocks collided with the surface, are seen here: large, small, overlapping, irregular, clustered, older and more recent, both well-defined and smoothed away by erosion. On the floors of the valleys and craters is something exciting: patterns of swirling lines that indicate where material flowed during a previous martian ice age.<\/p>\n \tIcy flows across Mars<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tBird\u2019s-eye view of Coloe Fossae<\/a><\/p>\n These patterns hint at the past climate of the Red Planet. They\u2019re known more technically as lineated valley fill (in valleys) or\u00a0concentric crater fill (in craters). They formed as icy debris flowed slowly across Mars\u2019s surface \u2013 reminiscent of glaciers seen here on Earth \u2013 and became topped by a thick layer of rocky material.<\/p>\n However, this region sits at a latitude of 39\u00b0N, nowhere near Mars\u2019s north pole (at 90\u00b0N). How did ice accumulate here?<\/p>\n The answer lies in the pulse of advancing-retreating glaciers during an ancient ice age. Although Mars is currently dry, it has experienced alternating periods of warm and cold, freeze and thaw, throughout its history,\u00a0driven by changes in the tilt of its axis.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tTopographic map of Mars\u2019s Coloe Fossae region<\/a><\/p>\n During cold periods, ice spreads from the martian poles all the way down to these mid-latitudes, before retreating back when things get warmer \u2013 but leaving telltale signs behind. We see lineated valley and concentric crater fill consistently throughout this latitude band of Mars, suggesting that the entire global climate of Mars changed. This area may have been covered in ice as recently as half a million years ago, when Mars\u2019s most recent ice age ended.<\/p>\n These features \u2013 signs of glacial flows, Coloe Fossae, craters \u2013 are marked on the annotated image<\/a>, and the split between Mars\u2019s northern and southern terrain is best seen in the topographic<\/a>\u00a0and context<\/a>\u00a0maps. This divide encircles the entire planet; in some places it\u2019s sharply marked by a two-km-high cliff, while in others \u2013 such as here \u2013 it\u2019s more of a broad, broken-up transitional zone (known as Protonilus Mensae).<\/p>\n Signs of lineated valley and concentric crater fill were also highlighted in our August Mars Express feature on Acheron Fossae<\/a>.<\/p>\n