I-95, near blob bypass, clearly indicated.

In June 2017, Watkins was selected as a NASA astronaut and in April 2022, she launched into space to work on the ISS. Watkins finished writing the JGR paper while a postdoc at Caltech and submitted it to the journal as she went into astronaut training. By the time proofs of the paper were ready for her to review, she was in space—so she gave her final input on the paper from low-Earth orbit.

Oh.

Mars lacks the tectonic plates that cause most of the shaking on Earth. Instead, the red planet is almost entirely shaped by shaped by eolian, or wind, erosion.

Eolian! Isn’t that a musical term?

Mars’s atmospheric volume is just 1 percent that of Earth, so one might not expect wind erosion to be so important on the planet.

One would be wrong.

In recent decades geologists argued that the impact of modern wind acting to cause erosion on Mars is very limited.

They would be wrong, too.

And yet, it now appears that wind erosion plays a key role in driving the rock cycle on Mars, certainly during its earlier history prior to 3 billion years ago when the rocks at Gale Crater were being formed and then eroded.

She wrote all this from low-Earth orbit, you say?

Cameroon’s ‘Exploding Lakes’: Disaster Expert Warns Deadly Gas Release Could Cause Another Tragedy
Henry Ngenyam Bang | Phys.org | Sept. 12, 2022

A sudden change on 29 August 2022 in the color and smell of Lake Kuk, in north-west Cameroon, has caused anxiety and panic among the local residents. Fears are driven by an incident that happened 36 years ago at Lake Nyos, just 10km away.

On 21 August 1986, Lake Nyos emitted lethal gases (mainly carbon dioxide) that suffocated 1,746 people and around 8,300 livestock. It wasn’t the first incident like this. Two years earlier, Lake Monoum, about 100km south-west of Lake Nyos, killed 37 people.

Research into the cause of the Lake Nyos disaster concluded that carbon dioxide gas—released from the Earth’s mantle—had been accumulating at the bottom of the lake for centuries. A sudden disturbance of the lake’s waters due to a landslide resulted in a sudden release of around 1.24 million tons of carbon dioxide gas.

Survivors briefly heard a rumbling sound from Lake Nyos before an invisible gas cloud emerged from its depths. It killed people, animals, insects and birds along its path in the valley before dispersing into the atmosphere where it became harmless.

!

After Lake Nyos erupted, its water turned a deep red color and survivors reported the smell of rotten eggs. These are the same characteristics to have recently manifested at Lake Kuk. The change in color of Lake Nyos was only noticed after the gas burst.. . . tens of thousands of people living around the lake were urged to “remain calm while being vigilant to continuously inform the administration of any other incident noted.”

“Remain calm: it’s only a sudden release of 1.24 million tons of carbon dioxide gas that kills people, animals, insects and birds along its path.”

. . . it’s important to know which lakes are at risk of “exploding.”

— Duh —

. . . . They are at an even greater risk of explosion when the lakes sit in wide or large craters where there are disturbances.

(I could have told you that.)

Investigating all the crater lakes in Cameroon would be a logistical challenge. It would require significant funding, a DIVERSE scientific team, technical resources and transportation to the lakes. Since most of the crater lakes are in remote areas with poor communication network (no roads, rail or airports), it would take a couple of years for the work to be completed.

— say the $cientist$.