6 ms·
Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars
Research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09736-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09736-y
- amelius 10mo agoStrange that the article doesn't say what this means for the formation of life.
- tsimionescu 10mo agoDoes it mean anything? There are some theories that lightning could be involved in abiogenesis on Earth, but it's not in any way a clear thing.
- verisimi 10mo ago[flagged]
- stavros 10mo agoAre you saying you reject the use of "we" for any group that doesn't include you?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Razengan 10mo agoIt's specially annoying when people use it to latch on to achievements they had no part in. Like Americans today going "We stopped Hitler" etc.
- temp0826 10mo agoI use it to give credit to peers if I've done something good (and maybe to take/share some blame if I wasn't directly responsible). The one that makes me cringe is people saying us/we when referring to their preferred sportsball team though
- stavros 10mo agoAh, in that sense yeah, I also feel similarly. I thought that the article was written by someone on the discovering team, hence my confusion.
- komali2 10mo agoFor this reason I've never understood the emotion "pride" when applied to anything you didn't personally do. For example pride in getting a bug fixed, or running a personal record lap, makes perfect sense. But "proud to be an American," or "proud of our troops," "proud of some sports team," I just don't get it.
- freehorse 10mo agoI assume it is essentially more about if it includes the author of the article. In the specific case, the author is a journalist not a scientist part of the actual group that did the work, so their "we" seems to forcingly include everybody in the planet, thus also OP here. I dont think OP would have an issue if one of the scientists in this case used "we".
- stavros 10mo agoAh good shout, I was assuming the author of the article was also on the team of the discovery, but it's Gizmodo, so I shouldn't have thought that.
- freehorse 10mo agoYeah tbh the comment sounded weird to me at first, prob because the actual problem is not that I (ie the reader) am not part of the people that made the discovery, but because the author of the article who uses "we" is not. Maybe if I was part of such a discovery it would actually feel even weirder reading somebody I have not worked with on it as "we did it", but I have not been part of such a newsworthy discovery to test it.
- verisimi 10mo agoYes. If I wasn't one of the group members, I shouldn't be included in the collective noun "we". I did nothing to detect triboelectric discharge, I assure you. I have very low awareness of the thing. Why does the reporter assume I did anything? Why should I be bathed in the glory (or infamy) of it? Similarly, when people say 'the UK has sent weapons to so-and-so', I object to being included, as if I had anything to do with it. I think it's the false attribution, the welling of pride that I guess I'm meant to feel and the casual duplicitous use of language (lying, misleading) that bothers me. Why not relay the truth of the matter, when its perfectly simple to do?
- wongarsu 10mo agoI'd assume most French would be happy with "France detected Lightning on Mars" I read the title as equivalent to "Humanity detected Lightning on Mars", which I'm also perfectly happy with
- simgt 10mo agoI did not think much of the title before reading the parent comment as I also read "humanity", but now it's the lack of consistency and double standards that annoy me. "France detected Lightning on Mars", fine, let's stop cutting the funding of public research so we can keep on saying we. Also let's title "We released GPT-5", "We landed a rocket on a barge".
- thatjoeoverthr 10mo agoMaybe let's extend it to negative things, too. "We crashed a Yugo into a bollard."
- freehorse 10mo agoThe journalist writing the article starts with > Scientists analyzed 28 hours of recordings over two Martian years, listening for electrical signals. Not with > We analyzed 28 hours of recordings over two Martian years, listening for electrical signals. Nor > Humanity analyzed 28 hours of recordings over two Martian years, listening for electrical signals. Somehow it would be weird to assume that "everybody" put the effort into this, but "we" all reap the success. On the other hand, this is done with taxpayer money, and even if not, it is done in the context of the whole global economy and we are all interconnected and everybody steps on the shoulders of giants anyway, so, in the grand scale of things, a use of "we" can make sense for everything that happens. Moreover, OP's argument holds also for the france case anyway.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- thatjoeoverthr 10mo agoI assume you're downvoted for pedantry (understandable) but it is a real pattern. Whenever it's a space topic it's always "we" or "Japan" or "America". Nobody is so vague on other topics. I suspect it's a throwback to the Cold War space race when the major players did flights in a geopolitical context. If the institute's name is very long, like here, maybe "Scientists detected ..." or "Researchers ..."
- wongarsu 10mo agoImho it's a quirk due to English's hate for the passive voice. Most languages would just go with "Lightning was detected on Mars". Naming the institute does not add any value to the average reader here, nor does the word "Scientists". "France" adds a bit of value, so that'd be the next best thing after the passive voice
- freehorse 10mo agoPassive voice in english is fine but it does not make for as catchy news articles (as also in other languages). "Scientists detected lighting on mars" is also just fine.
- genezeta 10mo ago> Whenever it's a space topic It relates "us" to "earthlings". We, as in "humans", live on Earth. Space is "outside". We humans look outside to space and discover things there. I feel it's more that sense of making clear that it's "us", humans, doing the discovery vs some other species or entity out there.
- baiwl 10mo agoRight? It wasn’t me. So was it Gizmodo, the website where this was posted?
- Razengan 10mo agoDoes that mean Mars' ground is electrically charged (positively or negatively) or what?
- saagarjha 10mo agoI assume it's earthe–wait.
- wongarsu 10mo agoThis discovery is thanks to Perseverance having microphones. It's crazy to think about that 2021 was the first time we had working microphones on Mars. The first Mars Microphone was originally supposed to land in 1999 on the Polar Lander, but that one didn't survive the landing. The next was in 2008 on Phoenix 's Mars Descent Imager, but in integration testing a bug was discovered that made the Descent Imager risky to use, so that was never activated. And on all the rovers since then a microphone wasn't deemed important enough compared to all the other possible payloads
- zokier 10mo ago> The next was in 2008 on Phoenix 's Mars Descent Imager, but in integration testing a bug was discovered that made the Descent Imager risky to use, so that was never activated. And on all the rovers since then a microphone wasn't deemed important enough compared to all the other possible payloads There was exactly one Mars rover, Curiosity, between 2008 and Percy.
- chistev 10mo agoHow does this work in practice. If a microphone is up there, it's constantly listening for things right? So how do humans here on Earth go over it to know if a sound was picked up knowing there's hours of recording? Is it that the whole system is programmed to show a spike when sound is captured?
- KeplerBoy 10mo agoListening to hours of recording doesn't even seem like a lot considering this is the only microphone we have on another planet. You would need like 4 people doing this full time, which is a drop in the bucket for a project on this scale. Of course this is not how it's done and almost all of the recording will just be wind or noise from the rover itself, which can easily be filtered out.
- henrebotha 10mo agoThis doesn't require anything fancy. I haven't used my sound engineering qualification in 14 years and I could do it by hand. You can visually scan through the recorded waveform and look for shapes that stand out. Simple audio processing techniques like using a noise gate to shut off the volume whenever the input level is below some configured threshold can make this even easier.
- throwawayffffas 10mo agoWhat blows my mind is that we had not before. I would think that with all that dust flying around it's got to be pretty common. And we have satellites orbiting Mars for decades and apparently we didn't see any.
- larodi 10mo ago...perhaps resolution and FPS provided by these orbital cameras are not exactly what one would expect.
- irjustin 10mo agoThis lightning is only a few centimeters long: https://www.kpbs.org/news/science-technology/2025/11/26/at-long-last-the-mystery-of-lightning-on-mars-is-solved https://www.kpbs.org/news/science-technology/2025/11/26/at-l...
- chistev 10mo agoWhat are the implications for life?
- stronglikedan 10mo agosame as before
- kadoban 10mo agoVaguely positive for abiogenesis, but not in a way that really moves the needle at all.
- irjustin 10mo agoThis isn't lightning like we think on earth. It's only a few centimeters long which is why it's never been detected before except by microphone[0]. [0] https://www.kpbs.org/news/science-technology/2025/11/26/at-long-last-the-mystery-of-lightning-on-mars-is-solved https://www.kpbs.org/news/science-technology/2025/11/26/at-l...
- yesco 10mo agoWouldn't it be static electricity in that case and not lightning? Not sure if this is just a technical definition thing I'm missing or if lightning just makes a cooler sounding headline.
- moron4hire 10mo agoLightning is static electricity that builds in an atmosphere.
- zamadatix 10mo agoAnd a mountain is a bump on the ground. It does feel like "lightning" comes with context beyond how the charge was formed, even if it could be technically correct to say that's all it is. Of course almost nobody knows what triboelectric discharge is either, but sticking to "static electricity" fits well between the two.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- nomel 10mo agoLightning is a discharge of static electricity, but a discharge of static electricity is not lightning.
- moron4hire 10mo ago<sigh> In the atmosphere!
- shevy-java 10mo agoThor is there, swinging his ... hammer. Edit: Wait a moment ... that's not actually lightning? "By listening to the sounds of Mars, the team identified interference and acoustic signatures in the recordings that are characteristic of lightning." So they could only listen to sound? I mean, aren't pictures more convincing? We need more cameras on Mars.
- dgb23 10mo agoGalvanizing!
- keepamovin 10mo agoI see waht you did there. But your comment is so subtle, it's boiling the frog of HN's humor reflex
- keepamovin 10mo agoHow do we know it's not alien lightsaber battles tho?
- Andrew-Tate 10mo ago[dead]
- Walt-Stevens21 10mo ago[dead]
- zombot 10mo agoDusty tornadoes and lightning? I'm beginning to like Mars.