(08-27-2023, 12:03 PM)727Sky Wrote: I kept waiting on them to come up with a theory of what could have caused such a vast electrical storm... We have all seen lightning flashes produced by ejecting pumice from volcanism but the Mars surface takes that to a whole different level... Kinda makes you wonder if the Martian dust storms could have produced such discharges in the past ?
Can you imagine setting up your Mars base and having something like that happen once again... Even if you were deep underground you might not be safe... Planets are nice when they are nice yet deadly when they are not.. Just look at Earth's history to include the time which is referred to as snowball earth or many other extinction level events.. some possibly as recent as 12,000 years ago..?
I have a theory on what caused such a vast electrical storm.
It appears that at one point in the history of our solar system a large rogue planet was passing through and it's trajectory was changed by the gravitational pull of our Sun.
Not enough to become a stable orbiting planet, but just enough to become a long elliptical orbit.
And each pass took it through the orbit of a planet that was once in between Mars and Jupiter, and one day that pass coincided with that planet being in the way of this giant and was demolished into hundreds of smaller asteroids.
What else could create an asteroid belt?
So if we have evidence of a large planet passing close to Mars, I find it likely that close proximity of 2 planets would see large lightning storms between the 2.
That's my guess anyway.