Friday, June 6, 2014

Heavy Metal Frost on Venus


False color, real topography rendering of what
Venus "frost" might look like (NASA)

Besides being the coolest title for a paper ever, this is the explanation for the highly reflective "snow" seen on high mountains on Venus by the Magellan mission in the mid 90s. Specifically, based on spectroscopic data, the authors argue that this material is lead and bismuth sulfides precipitated from the atmosphere.

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