{"id":794481,"date":"2025-03-18T08:28:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T13:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=794481"},"modified":"2025-03-18T08:28:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T13:28:06","slug":"dust-devils-on-mars-produce-lightning-like-zaps-of-electricity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=794481","title":{"rendered":"Dust devils on Mars produce lightning-like zaps of electricity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<figure class=\"ArticleImage\">\n<div class=\"Image__Wrapper\"><\/div><figcaption class=\"ArticleImageCaption\">\n<div class=\"ArticleImageCaption__CaptionWrapper\">\n<p class=\"ArticleImageCaption__Title\">Dust storms on Mars are electric<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleImageCaption__Credit\">MARK GARLICK\/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY\/Alamy<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Electrified whirlwinds on Mars can produce lightning-like discharges, which could pose a threat to the rovers trundling around on the Red Planet\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n<p>Severe weather on Mars can sometimes create dust devils, whirlwinds of Martian soil that spin for a few minutes before vanishing. Dust devils form on Earth too, and they can become electrified when the larger dust particles they carry \u2013 which tend to be positively charged \u2013 fall to the ground, while smaller and negatively charged particles are lofted upwards. If this electric field becomes large\u2026<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2472525-dust-devils-on-mars-produce-lightning-like-zaps-of-electricity\/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&#038;utm_source=NSNS&#038;utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_content=space&#038;rand=772163\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dust storms on Mars are electric MARK GARLICK\/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY\/Alamy Electrified whirlwinds on Mars can produce lightning-like discharges, which could pose a threat to the rovers trundling around on the&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":794482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-794481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-scientist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=794481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/794482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=794481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=794481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=794481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}