The Magnetic Face of Plasma Irregularities on Mars

Eos reports that NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has detected plasma density irregularities in the Martian ionosphere that are electromagnetic rather than electrostatic. Numerical simulations by Jiang and colleagues show that an electromagnetic Rayleigh‑Taylor instability, driven by gravity, can generate these ripples during the night, producing magnetic field fluctuations of about one nano‑Tesla and density changes up to seventy percent of the background. The study improves our picture of how Mars' thin atmosphere interacts with its weak magnetic environment, and the authors note that similar processes may operate on other weakly magnetized planets or moons.

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