Submitted by GeoGeoGeoGeo t3_yf5p66 in science
Research Paper: Tectonics of Cerberus Fossae unveiled by marsquakes
Are the planets all the same relative age? If so it would make sense.
Well yes and no. They all formed roughly around the same time, but if we believe the massive impact theory, earth was essentially REformed some time later
Olympus Mons erupting would be a great start to a sci-fi novel
Oh interesting, I hadn't heard of this one yet.
Cerberus marsquake magma is an otherworldly discovery!
From the linked release by ETH Zurich:
>An international team of researchers, led by ETH Zurich, analysed a cluster of more than 20 recent marsquakes that originated in the Cerberus Fossae graben system.
>From the seismic data, scientists concluded that the low-frequency quakes indicate a potentially warm source that could be explained by present day molten lava, i.e., magma at that depth, and volcanic activity on Mars. Specifically, they found that the quakes are located mostly in the innermost part of Cerberus Fossae.
>When they scanned observational orbital images of the same area, they noticed that the epicentres were located very close to a structure that has previously been described as a “young volcanic fissure.” Darker deposits of dust around this fissure are present not only in the dominant direction of the wind, but in all directions surrounding the Cerberus Fossae Mantling Unit.
>“The darker shade of the dust signifies geological evidence of more recent volcanic activity – perhaps within the past 50,000 years - relatively young, in geological terms,” explains Simon Stähler, the lead author of the paper, which has now been published in the journal Nature.
>Stähler is a Senior Scientist working in the Seismology and Geodynamics group led by Professor Domenico Giardini at the Institute of Geophysics, ETH Zurich.
ETA spacing.
Summarized:
Other scientists: Mars is dead. It can't tectonic.
This paper : Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that Mars here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.
Other scientists : What's that?
This paper : send rovers across the planet and look for loose change.
We don't know for sure, but was assume they all formed around 4.5-4.6 billion years ago. They where spinning around in a giant debris cloud collecting more and more material and slamming into each other until we had what we see today... or something like that.
So that means they are potentially made up of significantly different materials, perhaps like seams of materials in a mine the cloud was not likely to be evenly distributed and it's hard to say what's really on the inside. It's not like the planet are just blobs ejected from the sun that just happened to turn out that way, much of what they became is based on how they spun around that early cloud of debris and what they run into or what ran into them.
The bigger a protoplanet got the more stuff it could suck in until it was a planet and it was big enough to even absorb smaller planets and protoplanets or get absorb.
It was a game of absorb or get absorbed until they carved the relatively empty space you see today.
Yes you have its called the moon
No, I haven't. Seeing the moon doesn't mean I've heard the theory stated above. That would be really weird thing to lie about.
The average density of mars is about 70% that of earth. so we'd expect that its made of relatively less metal than earth and more light elements like carbon, oxygen, and silicon. (this is complicated somewhat by compression, but you can do some complicated modelling which suggests that Mars is indeed a slightly different composition than the Earth (its more similar to the Moon)
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Well damn! Maybe if this is true it might actually be possible to give the planet the push it needs to induce the development of a magnetic field.
Why does everyone always assume living things are dead? I'll never understand.
A week ago, someone's dream of Mars-lava-cooked sausages was impossible, but now they have hope
Bet you an ancient civilization is living underground using the volcanic activity as geothermal energy.
ps this some good weed
NASA Scientist 1: BYE BYE ROVERS
NASA Scientist 2: Have fun roaming the planet!
NASA Scientist 1: Think it'll work?
NASA Scientist 2: It'd take a miracle.
Does anyone know how this is possible?
Mars has “generally been considered a dead planet?” Scientists have been pushing forth theories stating the opposite for longer than most of us have been alive.
The real motivation for the first humans to walk upon the face of another planet: the most epic camping trip ever embarked upon.
TIL Marsquakes are a thing
You kinda missed an important word in the middle there
I did not miss it. I left it out on purpose because it’s obvious.
Didn't anyone watch Total Recall?
Yeah, but it makes your comment not make sense
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Would have made an epic National Lampoon movie.
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It's more to do with size, as smaller bodies will loose their heat to space more rapidly than larger bodies. However, even this assumption has led to some surprises. The moon, for example, was once thought to be solid - far too small to retain any heat today - but recently was found to have a fluid outer core and mantle with partial melt. Ultimately, as magma rises due to its buoyancy relative to the surrounding mantle rock, the moon may actually become volcanically active in the future if the partial melt continues to rise upwards through its mantle before it solidifies.
That's not how self sustaining geodynamos work
We will need several nukes and a bad ass team.
Are the planets largely less dense as you get further away? Like the elements were light enough to make it further out in larger quantities? Considering it’s rocky planets, then gas planets, it seems that way. I’m sure there’s a huge margin of error when taking material accumulation and how those materials interact with one another to then make larger atoms, especially the more massive planets.
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Live long and prosper
Volcanos gonna volcano
Well, I never said that I knew how they did, just saying that heard the talk about nuking Mars to melt the core and create a magnetic field, and if the core is already at least partially heated, the thought occured to me that perhaps that makes such a thing more viable.
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Core could still be hot from planet forming, or from mars theorized huge 3rd moon crashing into it later on causes a huge hot event.
Watch out for the R.O.U.S.es!
Heat trapped somewhere in mars could be great for energy production if geothermal is possible but not likely. Mars has no magnetic field and cannot sustain an atmosphere without one otherwise solar winds will blow it away like a candle.
However, if there is heat and warm water could we find life on mars?
They hypothesized that one Europa or Enceladus has warm water could have microbial life present.
Hey, I thought it was a funny way to reference the theory. Sorry they thought you were attacking them.
It seems like that was a joke that relies either on prior knowledge on deductive reasoning, though with how Reddit typically operates, I get why you’d feel defensive.
Just for clarification, the person you replied to is basically saying that the reformation-causing “massive impact” jettisoned pieces of debris out into space, some of which became the moon. Which is to say, even without actually understanding the theory, you are aware of its effects.
In short, no one’s calling you a liar. But seeing the moon does mean you’re familiar with the end result of Massive Impact Theory, even if you didn’t know that’s what you were looking at.
That doesn't mean you've heard of it before tho. :v which is the problem, I was told, specifically, yes I have heard of it before. I had not.
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Idk what to tell you except that jokes aren’t meant to be taken literally. I tried my best to explain the intent/humor of the joke, but it’s possible that it’s just not your type of humor. Or maybe there’s a language barrier.
> I was told specifically, yes I have heard of it before
You were told a joke.
Rovers Of Unusual Size? I don't believe they exist.
Might be geologically active internally but not have the right metals in the core to generate magnetic field.
The closer you get to the sun -- or in this case, the protostar that became the sun -- the hotter it gets. Obviously. That's important because it means that when you're close to the sun, it's too hot for many molecules to stay solid, and they'll evaporate (or rather, sublimate). It's very difficult for forming planets to accrete gases, so planets that form close to the sun will generally be denser.
Outside a certain radius, it will be cool enough for water to form ice, and the average density of solid material will plummet. The moons of the gas giants, and Kuiper Belt objects like Pluto are much less dense than Earth because they're made of much more water than Earth, by mass. Planetesimals in this part of the solar system can even grow large enough to start accreting the gases in the forming solar system and grow to incredible masses.
Of course, formation is not the end of the story. Our solar system is not static, and the planets can radically change their position with time. There are many examples of Jupiter sized exoplanets that orbit their stars further in than Mercury!
Any other truths you gonna spill the beans on?
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I'm not sure what you heard exactly but the reality is that unfortunately it's simply not possible.
Setting aside the difficulties of transporting the ludicrous amounts of nuclear warheads required to heat that much rock, how would you deliver the nuclear warheads to the required depth even if you could get them to Mars?
The deepest hole on Earth (Kola Superdeep Borehole) took about 21 years(?) of active drilling to reach a depth of ~12 km. At that point drilling was too difficult to continue as temperatures were hotter than expected and the rock began to behave like a warm plastic so the hole would collapse on itself (on Earth there's a transition zone where rocks go from behaving in a brittle fashion to behaving in a ductile fashion known as the Brittle-Ductile Transition Zone, this transition will exist on every rocky planet at slightly different depths). To reach the core of Mars, you'd need to drill down ~1,560 km. That means that on Earth, the Kola Superdeep Borehole managed to reach an equivalent of 0.7% of the way to the Martian core. Just over half of 1%.
Hopefully that helps paint a partial picture as to why the idea of restarting the magnetosphere on Mars has no basis in reality.
It’s your dream isn’t it?
Oh yeah, I've heard that it wasn't technically feasible for a lot of reasons. Kinda' why I said, hey, maybe if there's heretofore unknown existing magma under the surface, maybe that can change some things. But thanks for the deep dive there, my man!
So .. maybe there was never a magnetic field? Do we need a different theory about how Mars lost most of its atmosphere?
part could still be molten but not rotating / convecting
I would actually like to see that, though I hope it isn't going to be Matt Damon again
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It’s got enough iron it’s just not got a dynamo going currently, you need to generate convection currents to get a nice stable field going
That seismic activity are just the giant burrowing spiders.
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If you’re further in than mercury you would have a good chance of being tidally locked right?
I wonder about mercury too since it has like no crust compared to the earth. I had heard one theory that mercury had a big collision and it stripped away most of that crust. Sucks mercury is so hard to get to. I wish we knew more about it.
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No, hot spot volcanism is due to a singular active plume within the mantle. Why/if there is a singular active plume of hotter material I can't really guess at. But to get a magnetic field (usually, usually) you would need some kind of consistent motion in a liquid iron (outer) core. I say usually bc there are planets with induced magnetic fields e.g. Mercury, some moons of Jupiter
I should have noticed Billy Crystal was a coauthor
Personally, I like the theory that a precursor race of humans lived on mars and then fucked it up with climate change/nuclear war. They had already terraformed earth so they moved here and started living in more nomadic ways to try and prevent us from becoming as technologically advanced as them and making the same mistakes.
I haven't heard of this one. Thank you for this, I would enjoy reading these soon :)
The core needs to have a solid inner and molten outer to form a magnetic field.
It could easily have a totally solid core, and still have a mostly molten mantle and volcsnism.
You probably wouldn’t even notice even if you are standing on it, unless you’re at the caldera. Volcanoes like that tend to just ooze out.
Magnetic field (planetary; at least ours) come from spinning metal cores of planet. Not just magma.
Yep it’s no different than an electromagnet.
Suddenly Outer Wilds
And it does, and always had. Far weaker than our’s, but it does exist, same with the atmosphere.
You telling me the movie The Core lied to me?!
Also, it’s the size of Arizona…
Don't forget about the idea that Judaism was founded by time travels from the future
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Oh, this is fascinating! I had accepted the general opinion that Mars was a dead planet geologically, with only slight gravitational shifts perhaps.
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