Nathi Magubane, Penn Today
When a mudflat crumbles on Earth, or an ice sheet splinters on one of Jupiter’s moons (Europa), or an ancient lakebed breaks on Mars, do these fractures follow a hidden geometric script? Could similar patterns on another planet hint that water once existed there—and possibly sustained life?
To most, these questions would be idle curiosities, but to geophysicist Douglas Jerolmack at the University of Pennsylvania and mathematician Gábor Domokos at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, they hold the key to decoding the surfaces of distant planets across the solar system.
Their latest study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, suggests that the way a planetary body fractures is no random accident, and their findings could offer insights into detecting potentially habitable environments on other worlds.
“What’s wild is that nature keeps favoring the same patterns across vastly different environments,” says Jerolmack, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor of Earth and Environmental Science. “We expected some consistency, but the degree to which planetary surfaces organize themselves into predictable crack geometries—whether it’s ice, rock, or mud—was surprising. It suggests these patterns are fundamental, not just quirks of specific planets.”