大卫·鲍伊（David Bowie）在20世纪70年代初给他的伴奏乐队命名为“火星蜘蛛乐队”（The Spiders from Mars）。
But the rock legend certainly didn't know that the name describes a real phenomenon on our neighboring Red Planet.
Although not really spiders, "araneiforms" are dark fissures in the Martian soil that are completely unlike anything on Earth.
They congregate near the south pole of Mars and are known as "Martian spiders" because of their unique spider-like shape.
The latest images from two of the European Space Agency's probes – Mars Express and the Trace Gas Orbiter – show these peculiar formations in incredible detail.
The scientific name for these features—"aranieiforms"—literally means "shaped like a spider" in Latin.
They form in the frozen layer of carbon dioxide (CO2) on the surface of Mars, which is exposed to spring sunlight. Sunlight converts the CO2 ice at the bottom of the solid layer into gas, which then accumulates and passes upwards through the lumps of the overlying ice layer.
Jets of gas with dark dust break through the overlying ice up to three feet (one meter) thick before falling back to the surface and depositing.
This results in characteristic "spider-like" dark spots with diameters ranging from 150 feet to 3,000 feet in space exploration images.
Dr Meg Schwan, an astronomer at Queen's University Belfast, said: "The process of carbon dioxide jetting that forms the 'spider' is a completely different phenomenon from Earth. ”
"This jet process is associated with the seasons of Mars and releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. ”
According to Dr. Schwann, the only celestial body suspected of having such a jet is Neptune's moon Triton, which is known to be geologically active.
Spider-like structures have been observed more than 20 years ago, but it wasn't until 2021 that astronomers definitively proved how they formed.
Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have recreated this process on Mars in the lab by lowering and lifting frozen blocks of carbon dioxide onto layers of gravel.
Experiments have shown that spider-like patterns are carved from dry ice directly from a solid state to gas, a process known as "sublimation".
This process takes place on Mars because the planet's atmosphere is mostly made up of carbon dioxide, which is about 95%.
In contrast, there is only about 0.04 per cent of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, which is mostly composed of nitrogen (78 per cent) and oxygen (20 per cent).
According to the European Space Agency, spider-like formations are particularly concentrated around an area of Mars nicknamed Inca City.
Inca City, more formally known as Angustus Labyrinthus, was discovered by NASA's Mariner 9 rover in 1972 – the year Bowie and the Martian Spider released their landmark album.
Bowie recruited the band, but gave them a new name, taken from a line from his song "Ziggy Stardust," which was also included on the album.
As for spider-like formations, it was actually 50 years ago when it was not known, and Bowie took inspiration from another source – a UFO sighting in October 1954.
Spectators at a stadium in Italy believe they witnessed a Martian spacecraft that shed a thin fibrous material presumed to be the web of a migratory spider.
Meanwhile, the name of one of Bowie's most famous songs, "Life on Mars" (1971), is said to have been inspired by intense media coverage of the race between the United States and the Soviet Union to reach Mars.
As for whether there is life on Mars, scientists generally believe that the answer is probably no, mainly because of the lack of an atmosphere and extremely low temperatures.
Mars, on the other hand, was once covered with an abundant liquid ocean, so life on Mars is more likely.