Experiment Reveals What Is Truly Burrowing Beneath Mars’s Dunes Each Spring

Image: Squiggles in Hellas Planitia (linear gullies on Mars’ sand dunes). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Arizona. Article by Michelle Starr. ScienceAlert – October 26, 2025. Source: Utrecht University. Research article: Geophysical Research Letters.

Strange, sinuous gullies etched into the dunes of Mars are finally giving up their secrets. These gouges, new experiments reveal, are carved by the explosive sublimation of dry ice, burrowing down the slopes like a mole and blasting away sand as it goes. The new results finally account for all the curious features of Mars’ mysterious squiggles. “It felt like I was watching the sandworms in the film Dune,” says Earth scientist Lonneke Roelofs of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. […]

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Video: Mysterious gullies on Mars appear to have been dug, but by whom or what? – Faculty of Geosciences Utrecht University