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Nature 424, 1008-1009 (28 August 2003) | doi:10.1038/4241008a

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Mars: The devil is in the dust

Conway B. Leovy

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Mars is a highly dynamic planet — at least as far as dust is concerned. A better knowledge of how dust is lofted into the atmosphere will help to untangle the complex evolutionary history of the planet's surface.

New laboratory work by Greeley et al.1 and numerical flow simulations by Toigo et al.2, both appearing in the Journal of Geophysical Research, provide insights into the role of 'dust devils' in injecting dust into the martian atmosphere.Dust transport is a key to the long-term evolution of the martian surface, much of which has undergone episodes of erosion, deposition, burial and exhumation over the past four billion years3.