Swiss Cheese Features

Swiss cheese features (SCFs) are curious pits in the south polar ice cap of Mars (Mare Australe quadrangle) named from their similarity to the holes in Swiss cheese. They were first seen in 2000 using Mars Orbiter Camera imagery. They are typically a few hundred meters across and 8 metres deep, with a flat base and steep sides. They tend to have similar bean-like shapes with a cusp pointing towards the south pole, indicating that insolation is involved in their formation. The angle of the sun probably contributes to their roundness. Near the Martian summer solstice, the sun can remain continuously just above the horizon; as a result the walls of a round depression will receive more intense sunlight, and sublimate much more rapidly than the floor. The walls sublimate and recede, while the floor remains the same. As the seasonal frost disappears, the pit walls appear to darken considerably relative to the surrounding terrain. The SCFs have been observed to grow in size, year by year, at an average rate of 1 to 3 meters, suggesting that they are formed in a thin layer (8m) of carbon dioxide ice lying on top of water ice.

  • Swiss Cheese-like ice formations as seen by Mars Global Surveyor.

  • Swiss Cheese-like ice formations as seen by Mars Global Surveyor showing layers.

  • Close-up of Swiss Cheese Terrain, as seen by Mars Global Surveyor.

Read more about Swiss Cheese Features:  See Also

Famous quotes containing the words swiss, cheese and/or features:

    “Nothing sets a person up more than having something turn out just the way it’s supposed to be, like falling into a Swiss snowdrift and seeing a big dog come up with a little cask of brandy round its neck.”
    —Claud Cockburn (1904–1981)

    “A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality.”
    —Clifton Fadiman (b. 1904)

    “The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
    —Marcel Proust (1871–1922)