A Martian lava flow so strong it eats mountains
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on March 19, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a crater that appears to sit on top of a plateau that was created by a flow of material coming from the northeast that — as the flow divided to get around that crater — it wore away the ground to leave the crater sitting high and dry.
What was the material in that flow? The location is at 9 degrees north latitude, in Mars’ dry tropics, so it is highly unlikely that the flows here are glaciers, even though they have some glacier-like features.
Instead, this is frozen lava, but Martian in nature in that its ability to push the ground out of its way suggests it was moving very fast, far faster than lava on Earth.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, near the source of the Athabasca flood lava event that flowed to the southwest and then split into two tributaries, one going west and the second going south. Athabasca is considered the most recent major volcanic flood event on Mars, having occurred about 600 million years ago, when it covered an area about the size of Great Britain in only a matter of weeks.
The white box in the inset shows the area covered by the picture above. The arrows indicate the flow direction around that crater. The black rectangle marks the location of an earlier cool image from January 2024, marking the spot where the Athabasca lava flow divided into those two tributaries.
All these features, including the picture above, suggest that the lava flow was fast, but they also suggest it was somewhat shallow. Instead of inundating the terrain and burying it under lava, it pushed material aside, kind of like a tsunami.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on March 19, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a crater that appears to sit on top of a plateau that was created by a flow of material coming from the northeast that — as the flow divided to get around that crater — it wore away the ground to leave the crater sitting high and dry.
What was the material in that flow? The location is at 9 degrees north latitude, in Mars’ dry tropics, so it is highly unlikely that the flows here are glaciers, even though they have some glacier-like features.
Instead, this is frozen lava, but Martian in nature in that its ability to push the ground out of its way suggests it was moving very fast, far faster than lava on Earth.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, near the source of the Athabasca flood lava event that flowed to the southwest and then split into two tributaries, one going west and the second going south. Athabasca is considered the most recent major volcanic flood event on Mars, having occurred about 600 million years ago, when it covered an area about the size of Great Britain in only a matter of weeks.
The white box in the inset shows the area covered by the picture above. The arrows indicate the flow direction around that crater. The black rectangle marks the location of an earlier cool image from January 2024, marking the spot where the Athabasca lava flow divided into those two tributaries.
All these features, including the picture above, suggest that the lava flow was fast, but they also suggest it was somewhat shallow. Instead of inundating the terrain and burying it under lava, it pushed material aside, kind of like a tsunami.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News