Twisted and tilted bedrock in Martian crater
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated cropped, and reduced to post here, is only a small example of the strangely tilted and twisted strata in the central peak region of 38-mile-wide Martin Crater on Mars. The full image shows more.
The picture was taken on January 12, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The section I’ve cropped out shows a series of stratified strata that are are not only significantly tipped from the horizontal, but have also been bent and deformed.
The crater itself is located about 260 miles south of Valles Marineris, as shown on the overview map below.
The white box in Martin Crater indicates the location of the above photo. It covers most of the central peak of this crater.
What caused these bedding planes to get tilted and twisted as we see them? And were they shaped this way before or after the impact that created the crater? The two features in the overview map that make me think these strata existed this way before the impact are the various north-south trending ridges and east-west cracks seen throughout this region. They suggest that this plateau south of Valles Marineris was at one point squeezed in an east-west direction, producing the ridges, as well as stretched in a north-south direction, producing the cracks. Such pushing and pulling could have also tilted and twisted the rock strata in Martin Crater.
Though this is a wild guess, it appears based on this paper on the geology of this region to be reasonable, though there remain many uncertainties and questions about that conclusion.
All we really know is that some big geological event in the far past reshaped this terrain, massively. The strata inside Martin Crater gives us an impressive peak at that event.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated cropped, and reduced to post here, is only a small example of the strangely tilted and twisted strata in the central peak region of 38-mile-wide Martin Crater on Mars. The full image shows more.
The picture was taken on January 12, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The section I’ve cropped out shows a series of stratified strata that are are not only significantly tipped from the horizontal, but have also been bent and deformed.
The crater itself is located about 260 miles south of Valles Marineris, as shown on the overview map below.
The white box in Martin Crater indicates the location of the above photo. It covers most of the central peak of this crater.
What caused these bedding planes to get tilted and twisted as we see them? And were they shaped this way before or after the impact that created the crater? The two features in the overview map that make me think these strata existed this way before the impact are the various north-south trending ridges and east-west cracks seen throughout this region. They suggest that this plateau south of Valles Marineris was at one point squeezed in an east-west direction, producing the ridges, as well as stretched in a north-south direction, producing the cracks. Such pushing and pulling could have also tilted and twisted the rock strata in Martin Crater.
Though this is a wild guess, it appears based on this paper on the geology of this region to be reasonable, though there remain many uncertainties and questions about that conclusion.
All we really know is that some big geological event in the far past reshaped this terrain, massively. The strata inside Martin Crater gives us an impressive peak at that event.
The support of my readers through the years has given 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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
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. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to 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.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five 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:
5. 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
This is certainly one of the best “cool images”, and surely a candidate for a “what the heck” image! I keep looking at the cliffs on the lower left of the full image, and then at the 90°inverted strata so close by…. And at so lower depth…. What the heck could cause such a massive distortion without destroying the strata? The distortions seem to have circular patterns, so probs crater related… But how? My only thought is perhaps relating to an ice and rock mix in the bedrock being more flexible than just pure rock? I can look at a sedimentary rock layer on earth and have a decent guess how it ended up that way…. Looking at this just makes me confused!!
Lee: Another explanation for this strata just occurred to me. If you look at the wider MRO context camera image (available here), it is clear that this feature is at the crater’s central peak, though that central peak appears to have been worn away.
Maybe we are seeing the base of that peak, the rest long gone because of wind and maybe even ice erosion. The vertical twisted strata we see would make sense for the central peak of an impact crater.