Slope streaks on Mars: A new “wet” mechanism

Slope steaks are one of the most intriguing modern phenomena observed on Mars. They have been mostly interpreted as some specific type of granular flow. We propose another mechanism for slope streak formation on Mars. It involves natural seasonal formation of a modest amount of highly concentrated chloride brines within a seasonal thermal skin, and runaway propagation of percolation fronts. Given the current state of knowledge of temperature regimes and the composition and structure of the surface layer in the slope streak regions, this mechanism is consistent with the observational constraints; it requires an assumption that a significant part of the observed chlorine to be in form of calcium and ferric chloride, and a small part of the observed hydrogen to be in form of water ice. This “wet” mechanism has a number of appealing advantages in comparison to the widely accepted “dry” granular flow mechanism. Potential tests for the “wet” mechanism include better modeling of the temperature regime and observations of the seasonality of streak formation.