Layered mesas in Martian chaos
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 19, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a 2,500 to 3,000-foot-high mesa with what the scientists call “bedrock layers”, most obvious as the lower terraces on the mesa’s western slopes.
What makes this mesa especially interesting is its overall shape. It appears as if something has taken a bite out of it, resulting in that bowl-like hollow on the mesa’s southern half.
Was this caused by an impact? Or has some other long term Martian processes caused it?
This mesa is just one of many mesas in a region of chaos terrain dubbed Hydraotes Chaos. Such chaos terrain is thought to form when erosion processes, possibly glacial in nature, that carve out canyons along faultlines, leaving behind mesas with randomly oriented canyons cutting in many directions.
The white dot in the middle of Hydraotes Chaos markes this location, with the two insets providing views at different resolutions. The first inset shows all of Hydraotes and its chaotic landscape of endless mesas and canyons. The second inset shows the mesas more closely, and if you look close, you will notice that only this one mesa has what appears to be a circular hollow.
Thus, the crater impact that produced this hollow is one of the most recent geological events that has occurred here. No other obvious craters are visible, suggesting that the process that formed the chaos terrain wiped clean the past record of cratering. Instead, that process resulted in these terraced mesas, produced by the past presence of either ice or catastrophic floods (as suggested by the evidence of a hypothesized intermittent inland sea. Now however the only erosion likely taking place is from wind, since Hydraotes is in the dry tropics where there is little or no near surface ice.
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In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
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Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 19, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a 2,500 to 3,000-foot-high mesa with what the scientists call “bedrock layers”, most obvious as the lower terraces on the mesa’s western slopes.
What makes this mesa especially interesting is its overall shape. It appears as if something has taken a bite out of it, resulting in that bowl-like hollow on the mesa’s southern half.
Was this caused by an impact? Or has some other long term Martian processes caused it?
This mesa is just one of many mesas in a region of chaos terrain dubbed Hydraotes Chaos. Such chaos terrain is thought to form when erosion processes, possibly glacial in nature, that carve out canyons along faultlines, leaving behind mesas with randomly oriented canyons cutting in many directions.
The white dot in the middle of Hydraotes Chaos markes this location, with the two insets providing views at different resolutions. The first inset shows all of Hydraotes and its chaotic landscape of endless mesas and canyons. The second inset shows the mesas more closely, and if you look close, you will notice that only this one mesa has what appears to be a circular hollow.
Thus, the crater impact that produced this hollow is one of the most recent geological events that has occurred here. No other obvious craters are visible, suggesting that the process that formed the chaos terrain wiped clean the past record of cratering. Instead, that process resulted in these terraced mesas, produced by the past presence of either ice or catastrophic floods (as suggested by the evidence of a hypothesized intermittent inland sea. Now however the only erosion likely taking place is from wind, since Hydraotes is in the dry tropics where there is little or no near surface ice.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
No one is “quite sure” what they are looking at here. But they are *sure* they are looking at *earth like planets* 300 light years away. The people who buy this stuff should be too embarrassed to show their faces in public.
The same people who aren’t sure what they are seeing here are certain they are seeing “earth like planets” 300 light years away. Story in there somewhere…
Bob, I for one welcome our science-hating Overlords.
Kent Brockman
https://youtu.be/8lcUHQYhPTE
(0:48)