Planet Four Talk

Old spider networks in Inca City.

  • p.titchin by p.titchin

    After a couple of years seeing these'spider networks' in Inca City, I still can't work them out!. I appeal to the others that have looked at these over the same time, Wassock, Kith and Angie, {+ of course all other interested parties!} what is occurring. These must have developed over a long time, but we do not see venting on them. I have little to offer, but can't help feel it may offer insight into spider formation . I remain (as always) puzzled 'boulder' Pete! 😉

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  • wassock by wassock moderator

    Pete, think there's a lack of 'friability' about these compared with similar stuff which is in the lace spider category. So I am thinking these are more polygonal cracks than spiders.
    Else where, and here, we see fans without spiders, fans consistently with particular spiders (though not always at the same place) and spiders which dont have fans. So for my money the coincidence of fan and spiders is equally likely to be chance as causal

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  • mschwamb by mschwamb scientist, translator in response to p.titchin's comment.

    Hi Pete,

    All good questions. We don't have all the answers. Actually one of the things that Planet Four can quantitatively answer is are there no fans on these regions. In seems like qualitatively lace terrain might actually show delayed fan development. Why the different channels are being carved is still an open question. Maybe topography, how compact the regolith is, and regolith composition play a role.

    The channels of traditional spiders don't seem to have noticeably channged depths over a few year time scale according to shadow measurements of HIRISE images, so the assumption is that it takes decades to centuries to carve the channels.

    Still lots to learn about the spiders, geysers, and fans. Hopefully Planet Four will give some answers. We had a productive science telecon this morning. Plugging away slowly towards completing the first paper.

    Cheers,

    ~Meg

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  • p.titchin by p.titchin in response to mschwamb's comment.

    Thanks to both of you for the comeback.. It's good to know that my suspicions that fans were not seen on this terrain were correct.~Pete

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  • HMB6EQUJ5 by HMB6EQUJ5

    fwiw, there's a few fans not "far" from the image site. Reference RGB color non-map strip ..just over 1/2 way down (center)

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  • p.titchin by p.titchin in response to HMB6EQUJ5's comment.

    Thanks HMB, yes, not far away there are loads of venting events. This is a specific area 0f a developed spider network. Yet in the last decade of observing--- no vents! As you will gather from any other comments, this is not just weird, but, leads to more brainstorming on the formation of spiders. Happy days! 😃 ~Pete

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  • Kitharode by Kitharode moderator in response to p.titchin's comment.

    Hi Pete. I'm as baffled as you are. Sorry mate. 😦

    I'm hoping that Michael Aye (scientist) will have something useful for us in the not too distant future. We were chatting elsewhere about the zones of Inca City and the way the spiders formed on the floors of the enclosed zones, but not outside of them, possibly due to a build-up of dust from the fans 'flowing' off the walls of the zones. Michael said that a paper was due out soon, which talked about dust/ice build-up and compaction rates (or similar)!

    Anyway, he said he'd let us know when it was available. It sounded interesting, so I hope he remembers us. 😉

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