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A dust devil looks a bit like a tornado, but is weaker and rarely lasts more than about a minute.

It is a twisting column of warmed air scooting across sun-heated ground, made visible by the dust that it lofts upwards. Although usually benign, occasionally dust devils can kill.

Dust devils have been known to appear on Mars since the 1970s. They have been observed both from the ground and from orbit.

The more dust in the Martian atmosphere, the warmer and more agitated it becomes, and this can escalate into a global dust storm.

When the dust settles, it can coat and disable the solar panels that are essential for many of the instruments we’ve landed on the planet.

There’s a lot we don’t know about how these devils function. But new research, published this week in Nature Communications, has recorded what dust devils sound like – giving fresh insights into how they operate.

But it also raises questions about how future astronauts would detect and interpret sounds on the red planet.

There has been a vast amount of erosion on Mars since the last rivers and lakes vanished, including at the landing sites of both Nasa’s current rovers Curiosity and Perseverance.

Although the erosive power of an individual dust devil is tiny, a billion years worth of dust devils could potentially have worn away kilometres of rock.

There are thus many reasons for wanting to better understand how dust devils function.

And we now know what a Martian dust devil sounds like thanks to the new study led by Naomi Murdoch of Toulouse University in France.

Many passing dust devils have been imaged by cameras on Mars landers and rovers, but Murdoch and her team report a dust devil that luckily passed exactly over the Perseverance rover on September 27, 2021, which was on the floor of Jezero crater.

The rover’s masthead camera, named SuperCam, includes a microphone, and this recorded the sound of the wind rising and falling as the dust devil passed over.

In detail, the wind noise rose when the leading wall of the vortex arrived, followed by a lull representing the calm air in the eye of the vortex, before a second episode of wind noise as the trailing wall of the vortex passed over.

This took less than ten seconds, and you can hear the sound recording here(https://jirafeau.isae-supaero.fr/f.php?h=2JWSkdJR&p=1) (turn your volume to max). Other sensors gave information too. They showed that the pressure fell to a minimum between the two bursts of wind noise – which to me is consistent with sucking rather than blowing – and also recorded impacts of individual dust grains onto the rover.

The dust devil was about 25 metres in diameter, at least 118 metres tall, and was tracking across the ground at about five metres per second.

The maximum wind speed in the rotating vortex was probably just under 11 metres per second, equating to a “fresh” to “strong” breeze on Earth.

Did it really sound like that? Listening to a recording purporting to be the sound of Martian wind is all very well, but is this really what we would hear if we were there ourselves? The first thing to note is that this does genuinely originate as “real sound”, unlike other data such as images or radio signals turned into sound (a process known as sonification), such as the so-called sound of two black holes colliding or radio noise from from Venus’s atmosphere.

The dust devil audio file contains actual sound waves picked up by a microphone on Mars.

There the atmosphere is much thinner than on Earth (Martian surface pressure is less than a hundredth of ours), so the high frequency component of sound hardly carries (scientists say it’s “attenuated”).

The result is that the wind sounds much lower in pitch than a similar wind on Earth.

The only other planetary body from which we have genuine sound recordings is Venus, where in 1982 two Soviet “Venera” landers recorded wind and lander operation noises.

However, if you were on Mars you could never hear the wind directly with your own ears.

If you were foolish enough to expose your ears to Mars’s atmosphere, the low external pressure would cause your eardrums to burst, and you would be instantly deaf as well as having no air to breathe.

If you were to go outside in a pressurised spacesuit (a much more sensible idea), what you would hear would depend on how well the sound waves were transmitted through the solid shell of your helmet, and then on how these were turned back into sound waves in the air inside your helmet.

In other words, you would hear a distorted version of what an external microphone would pick up. Imagine walking round on Earth with your head inside a goldfish bowl and you’ll get part of the idea.

If future human explorers on Mars want to hear what’s going on in the external environment, I suspect they will rely on a suit-mounted microphone feeding to wireless ear buds, although I can’t find any evidence that that this has yet been factored into Mars suit design.

This all boils down to a recording from external microphone being the best way to represent sounds on Mars, or indeed any other planet that has an atmosphere.

If you want to hear some more sounds from Mars, NASA has a collection of audio recordings you can listen to.


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Scientists Reportedly Found a Potential Sign of Life on a Distant Planet: What You Need to Know

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Scientists Reportedly Found a Potential Sign of Life on a Distant Planet: What You Need to Know

A team of astronomers have reportedly discovered biological activity outside the solar system. The scientists have revealed that the distant planet, named K2-18 b, comprises more than one molecule in its atmosphere that potentially has been generated by living things. However, this revelation has made a sensation among astronomers across the world, more specifically for those who study biosignatures in exoplanet atmospheres.

 

According to report by Nature.com, K2-18 b is a planet that is smaller than Neptune. It lies at a distance of 38 parsecs above the Earth.

About the Discovery

Dimethyl sulphide (DMS) has been discovered by scientists from the University of Cambridge, UK, in the atmosphere of K2-18b. The DMS molecule is generated by living organisms, which has raised speculations about the potential for life on this distant planet. The scientists used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to implement research. Also, the discovery happened when a molecule was detected in the starlight filtering through the planet’s atmosphere. These chemicals have raised curiosity amongst astronomers as they are generated by living organisms on the planet Earth.

This discovery first came into the light in the year 2023. However, the new revelations have been made as a result of the follow-up on similar findings. This time, the scientists used different wavelengths and a research strategy to support their discovery of molecules on the distant planet. .

Significance of this Discovery

For decades, scientists have been engrossed in studying life beyond Earth. Now that the pieces of evidence are hinting towards the potential existence of DMS or DMDS on K2-18 b. If proven, this will be a historic win for the scientists. Furthermore, this discovery is a step towards understanding planets from a broader perspective. Overall, more than 5,800 planets have been detected throughout the Universe.

Reason Behind Uncertainty by Other Researchers

The scientists are sceptical about this discovery as they doubt whether DMS or DMDS are really present or is K2-18 b is barren. While some of the researchers are not confident about the discovery, the expert team of scientists from the University of Cambridge, UK, is working extensively to provide a proven base to support their findings.

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Space Veteran Astronaut Returns to Earth to Celebrate his Birthday on April 20

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Space Veteran Astronaut Returns to Earth to Celebrate his Birthday on April 20

The oldest veteran astronaut from NASA landed from the International Space Station on his 70th birthday. Donald Pettit, the U.S astronaut, reached Earth after seven months with his crew members Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, two Russian cosmonauts. The spacecraft Soyuz MS-26 launched on September 11, 2024 and came back to Earth on Saturday, April 20, 2025, at 6:20 AM local time in the steppes of Kazakhstan. He has made a remarkable history by landing on his birthday. He is a renowned name in the space world and has completed 13 spacewalk hours.

Legacy of Pettit

According to reported by space.com , This was the fourth flight of Pettit and Ovchinin, but the second for Vagner. Pettit worked for 590 days, Ovchinin for 595 days, and Vagner for 416 days in space until now, counted after this landing. This trio orbited Earth 3,520 times and finished this 93.3 million-mile journey throughout their mission. NASA astronaut and Expedition 73 flight engineer Nichole Ayers wrote on X on Saturday, saying goodbye today to Donald Pettit. It’s a bittersweet moment as Pettit had an amazing mission by inspiring many individuals while being here.

Back to Earth

The trio began their arrival at 5:57 PM EDT on Saturday, as the Soyuz spacecraft undocked from the station. The vehicle had deorbited burn for around two and a half hours, shedding its orbit, leaving the gumdrop-shaped capsule to bring all of them home. Anne McCain, Ayers, and Jonny Kim, together with JAXA astronaut and Commander of expedition 73, Takuya Onishi, Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, are the ones who are still in space.

Soyuz Spacecraft MS-26

It marked a significant spaceflight to the ISS (International Space Station), from its launch to landing, as it transported three well-experienced crew members, including Donald Pettit, Ivan Vagner, and Aleksey Ovchinin, to space for long-term microgravity research in the field of biology, physics, and material science. The spacecraft also docked as an emergency space vehicle for up to 220 days.

Pettit’s Achievements

Many people who follow the science of opportunity demonstrations and photographs of Earth by him know that he is a man of great contributions. Pettit has also helped to oversee the departure of Spacex’s Crew-9 mission on Dragon Freedom, along with Crew-10 on Dragon Endurance and the Cygnus departure of a cargo ship. He has also been a flight engineer for Expedition 30/31 in 2012. Pettit has made major contributions by discovering g-cups to drink coffee in space and polarised photography from space.

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New Study Finds Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall Bigger and Nearer Than Thought

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New Study Finds Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall Bigger and Nearer Than Thought

Astronomers have revealed that the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, a massive network of galaxies, might be bigger than they realised. By mapping the cosmos with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)—the brightest explosions in the universe—astronomers found that this structure is even bigger than previously estimated. Surprisingly, portions of it also lie significantly closer to Earth than previously believed, challenging fundamental assumptions about how the universe is structured and evolves.
This cosmic structure was first observed in 2014 — a dense galaxy forming a filament of a supercluster.

A new study now extends the researchers’ previous work, but with a wider GRB sample. Hakkila and Zsolt Bagoly, authors of the study, have refined the measurements. They detected a number of relatively nearby GRBs in their sample. The evidence also shows the Great Wall is larger and wider than previously predicted.

Gamma-Ray Bursts Expose Structure Too Large for Current Models

According to a Space.com report, the GRBs figure prominently in the early discovery and more recent growth of the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall. These explosive outbursts — from either collapsing massive stars or colliding neutron stars — produce powerful jets that can be spotted over cosmological distances. Hakkila told the publication that GRBs act as another bright beacon for identifying galaxies, even those too faint to see directly. Because of their brightness, scientists can follow matter throughout the universe more distinctly than ever.

The Great Wall, over 10 billion light-years long, challenges the cosmological principle of uniform universe appearance. Its massive size indicates gaps in current theories and implies that the universe’s formation time was insufficient for such massive structures.

THESEUS May Reveal Full Scale of Cosmic Great Wall

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Burst observations reveal 542 GRB events, but more data is needed to fully understand the Great Wall’s scope due to misidentified origins and sparse sampling. Hakkila points toward the upcoming ESA mission THESEUS — the Transient High Energy Sources and Early Universe Surveyor — as the next major leap.

The mission aims to dramatically expand the catalogue of known GRBs, particularly at extreme distances. “It could finally provide the observational leverage needed to map the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall to its full extent,” Hakkila told Space.com, emphasising its role in refining our understanding of the universe’s large-scale structure.

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