Skip to main content

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

3 comments

First Signs of Lightning on Mars: NASA’s MAVEN Spacecraft Detects Mysterious Electrical Activity

For decades, scientists have wondered whether lightning exists on Mars. Dust storms on the Red Planet are powerful and massive, sometimes covering the entire planet. Because dust particles constantly collide during these storms, researchers suspected that electrical discharges similar to lightning might occur. However, there had never been direct evidence.

Now, scientists studying data from MAVEN have discovered the first clear indication of lightning-like activity on Mars. The finding comes after analyzing more than a decade of measurements collected by the spacecraft while orbiting the Red Planet.

The discovery provides new insight into the Martian atmosphere and helps scientists better understand how weather and electrical activity behave on other planets.

The Mission That Made the Discovery

The discovery was made using data from MAVEN, a spacecraft launched by NASA in 2013. MAVEN’s main goal is to study the upper atmosphere of Mars and understand how the planet lost most of its atmosphere over billions of years.

Since entering orbit around Mars in 2014, MAVEN has been collecting huge amounts of data about the planet’s atmosphere, magnetic environment, and interactions with the solar wind.

While reviewing this large dataset, scientists noticed something unusual: a specific electromagnetic signal that strongly resembles signals produced by lightning on Earth.

This signal is known as a whistler wave.

What Are Whistler Waves?

Whistler waves are low-frequency radio signals created by lightning discharges. When lightning strikes, it releases a burst of energy that travels through a planet’s magnetic field and ionosphere.

These signals get their name because, when converted into audio, they sound like a descending whistle.

On Earth, whistler waves are common and well studied. They travel along magnetic field lines through the planet’s magnetosphere and ionosphere.

Scientists have also detected whistler waves on other planets with strong magnetic fields, including:

  • Jupiter

  • Saturn

  • Neptune

These planets have powerful global magnetic fields that help guide the radio waves through space.

Mars, however, is very different.

Why Lightning on Mars Is Hard to Detect

Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a global magnetic field.

Billions of years ago, the internal processes that created Mars’s magnetic field stopped working. Without this global field, Mars does not have a strong magnetosphere like Earth.

Because of this, scientists believed that whistler waves would be extremely difficult to detect on Mars, even if lightning-like electrical discharges occurred.

However, Mars does have localized magnetic fields embedded in its crust. These crustal magnetic regions are scattered across the planet and are particularly strong in the southern hemisphere.

These smaller magnetic fields can sometimes guide electromagnetic waves in a similar way to a global magnetosphere. That means if lightning-like electrical activity occurs near these regions, whistler waves could still travel upward and be detected by an orbiting spacecraft.

This possibility encouraged scientists to keep searching for evidence.

Dust Storms: A Possible Source of Martian Lightning

Lightning on Earth usually forms inside storm clouds when particles collide and build up electric charge.

On Mars, there are no rain clouds, but the planet experiences massive dust storms and dust devils.

During these storms, dust grains constantly collide with each other. These collisions can create electrical charging of the particles, similar to static electricity.

Scientists believe that this charging process may eventually lead to electrical discharges, similar to lightning or sparks.

Laboratory experiments on Earth have already demonstrated that Martian dust conditions can produce electrical discharges.

Researchers compare these processes to volcanic lightning on Earth, where ash particles inside volcanic plumes collide and generate powerful electrical sparks.

Therefore, dust storms on Mars may create similar lightning-like activity.

The Rare Signal Detected by MAVEN

After analyzing more than 108,000 measurements from MAVEN, researchers discovered one clear example of a whistler wave in the Martian ionosphere.

This signal lasted about 0.4 seconds and spread across frequencies up to 110 hertz.

Although this might sound like a very short event, it had the exact characteristics expected from a lightning-generated whistler wave.

To confirm their discovery, scientists created computer models to simulate how the signal could travel from the Martian surface to the spacecraft.

The models showed that the signal could realistically propagate through the planet’s crustal magnetic field lines, reaching MAVEN in orbit.

The signal looked very similar to whistler waves created by lightning on Earth, suggesting that an electrical discharge likely occurred somewhere on the Martian surface or atmosphere.

Why This Detection Is So Rare

Detecting lightning-like activity on Mars is extremely difficult because many conditions must occur at the same time.

For the signal to reach the spacecraft:

  1. A lightning-like electrical discharge must occur.

  2. The event must happen near a strong localized magnetic field.

  3. The magnetic field must be oriented vertically.

  4. The spacecraft must pass over the region at exactly the right time.

  5. The ionosphere must have the right conditions to allow the signal to travel.

Researchers found that less than 1% of all MAVEN measurements occurred under the necessary magnetic conditions for detecting such signals.

Even when the conditions were right, lightning-like discharges may still be rare or weak.

This explains why scientists detected only one clear event in more than a decade of data.

What This Discovery Means for Mars Science

Although the signal was detected only once, it is extremely important.

It provides the first direct evidence that lightning-like electrical discharges can occur on Mars.

This discovery helps scientists better understand:

  • How Martian dust storms behave

  • How electricity builds up in planetary atmospheres

  • How atmospheric chemistry may be influenced by electrical discharges

Lightning can produce chemical reactions that form new molecules. On Earth, lightning helps create nitrogen compounds that influence atmospheric chemistry.

If similar processes occur on Mars, they could affect the planet’s atmosphere and surface environment.

Helping Future Mars Missions

The findings will also help scientists design future missions to study Mars.

Understanding electrical activity is important for:

  • Protecting spacecraft instruments

  • Designing atmospheric sensors

  • Planning human exploration missions

Future orbiters and landers may include instruments specifically designed to detect Martian lightning and electrical fields.

Such measurements could reveal more about the planet’s weather systems and atmospheric dynamics.

A Small Signal With Big Implications

The discovery made by MAVEN shows how valuable long-term planetary missions can be. After years of observations, a single tiny signal lasting less than half a second has opened a new chapter in our understanding of Mars.

Scientists still have many questions:

  • How often does lightning occur on Mars?

  • Are dust storms the main cause?

  • Could stronger discharges exist that we have not yet detected?

Future research will continue analyzing MAVEN’s data and observations from other spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet.

For now, this discovery confirms something scientists long suspected: Mars may not be as electrically quiet as once believed.

Even on a cold, dusty world millions of kilometers away, the sky may occasionally flash with sparks of electricity. 

Reference: 

  • František Němec et al.
    •  
,
Lightning-generated waves detected at Mars.Sci. Adv.12,eaeb4898(2026).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aeb4898

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular

Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

For years, scientists believed that adding even one qubit (a unit of quantum information) to a black hole needed energy. This was based on the idea that a black hole’s entropy must increase with more information, which means it must gain energy. But a new study by Jonah Kudler-Flam and Geoff Penington changes that thinking. They found that quantum information can be teleported into a black hole without adding energy or increasing entropy . This works through a process called black hole decoherence , where “soft” radiation — very low-energy signals — carry information into the black hole. In their method, the qubit enters the black hole while a new pair of entangled particles (like Hawking radiation) is created. This keeps the total information balanced, so there's no violation of the laws of physics. The energy cost only shows up when information is erased from the outside — these are called zerobits . According to Landauer’s principle, erasing information always needs energy. But ...
3 comments
Read more

Black Holes That Never Dies

Black holes are powerful objects in space with gravity so strong that nothing can escape them. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes can slowly lose energy by giving off tiny particles. This process is called Hawking radiation . Over time, the black hole gets smaller and hotter, and in the end, it disappears completely. But new research by Menezes and his team shows something different. Using a theory called Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) , they studied black holes with quantum corrections. In their model, the black hole does not vanish completely. Instead, it stops shrinking when it reaches a very small size. This leftover is called a black hole remnant . They also studied something called grey-body factors , which affect how much energy escapes from a black hole. Their findings show that the black hole cools down and stops losing mass once it reaches a minimum mass . This new model removes the idea of a “singularity” at the center of the black hole and gives us a better ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Planetary Movements Might Explain Sunspot Cycles and Solar Phenomena

Sunspots, dark patches on the Sun's surface, follow a cycle of increasing and decreasing activity every 11 years. For years, scientists have relied on the dynamo model to explain this cycle. According to this model, the Sun's magnetic field is generated by the movement of plasma and the Sun's rotation. However, this model does not fully explain why the sunspot cycle is sometimes unpredictable. Lauri Jetsu, a researcher, has proposed a new approach. Jetsu’s analysis, using a method called the Discrete Chi-square Method (DCM), suggests that planetary movements, especially those of Earth, Jupiter, and Mercury, play a key role in driving the sunspot cycle. His theory focuses on Flux Transfer Events (FTEs), where the magnetic fields of these planets interact with the Sun’s magnetic field. These interactions could create the sunspots and explain other solar phenomena like the Sun’s magnetic polarity reversing every 11 years. The Sun, our closest star, has been a subject of scient...
Post a Comment
Read more