Link: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/10/a-1000-mile-cloud-on-mars-may-reveal-physics-never-seen-in-nature/

Since it was first recorded by a probe in 2018, scientists have been unable to find a plausible explanation for the existence of this cloud, often referred to as the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC). Until now. Recently, researchers successfully modeled the cloud’s formation for the first time, their results suggesting that it may be driven by a physical process that has never been directly observed in any planet’s atmosphere.

“We found that we needed to include some exotic physics… physics that, while included in textbooks, is treated as theoretical and usually thought not to happen in nature. It certainly hasn’t been seen in action before,” Jorge Hernández-Bernal, a planetary scientist at Paris’ Sorbonne Université and lead author of the study, said in a press release. “Once we included this physics in our simulations, the AMEC emerged just as we hoped.”

On Earth, clouds usually form when water vapor creates droplets or ice crystals in the presence of tiny particles, such as dust or salt. The new study, published in Nature Geoscience, instead suggests AMEC could be forming through so-called homogeneous nucleation, where vapor changes directly into ice crystals on its own without any help from debris.

“It’s akin to droplets of condensation appearing in the middle of a room, rather than on a window,” Hernández-Bernal explained. “It’s wholly unexpected.”

I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable as the people who put this paper together, but invoking exotic physics seems a bit much when it could be a situation that is probably just a rare combination of conditions that Mars has in that location. And I understand that they surely know all that. They even suggest that maybe the particles are just much smaller... but then say those particles would combine. Well, maybe they don't in the conditions of Mars' atmosphere and the time span of the sudden updraft here.

physics never seen in nature

Physics is nature!

But we haven't seen it

thought I'd include an image for people who, like me, are allergic to clicking on links:

I ended up clicking on way more links than necessary when looking for that image, I really don't know what's wrong with me. One link was for a little infographic on ESA's website, which says this cloud appears in spring, rapidly forming this >1000km plume which fades away in a matter of hours.

“It’s akin to droplets of condensation appearing in the middle of a room, rather than on a window,” Hernández-Bernal explained. “It’s wholly unexpected.”

This really does sound like conditions that are outside normal Earth ambient

Sorry for being pedantic, but physics is not nature, but rather the laws governing nature.

To the window to the wall

'Til sweat condenses without needing tiny balls

How shitty are the links in that article? Did someone throw darts at vaguely space-related wired articles and word groups of the article?