A fractured spot in Mars’ northern lowland plains
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 16, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a pockmarked flat plain with a scattering of meandering hollows, each filled with ripple sand dunes that make these depressions resemble at first glance the tracks of tires.
Obviously, we are not looking at evidence of a past giant vehicle moving across the ground on Mars. The MRO science team labels these “fractures,” suggesting some past geological process caused the surface to crack in this manner, with those cracks widening with time due to erosion or sublimation.
The location of course tells us something about that process.
The red dot on the overview map to the right, located about midway between the Viking-1 and Pathfinder landing spots, marks this location inside Chryse Planitia, the lowland plain at the outlet from the vast canyons Valles Marineris and Kasei Valles.
The location is in the dry equatorial regions of Mars where orbital images have found little or no evidence of near surface ice. Thus, this pockmarked surface is dry, though its location at the outlet to these two canyons suggests it was once inundated by the catastrophic floods that scientists presently theorize poured forth from those canyons several billion years ago. Those floods could have deposited water here which froze and even sank into the dust-covered ground, causing many ice droplets everywhere. Could the many small holes now indicate spots where that ice once existed, but as the equatorial regions dried out sublimated away?
Maybe, but that doesn’t explain the fractures. Nor have I any theory as to their formation.
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Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 16, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a pockmarked flat plain with a scattering of meandering hollows, each filled with ripple sand dunes that make these depressions resemble at first glance the tracks of tires.
Obviously, we are not looking at evidence of a past giant vehicle moving across the ground on Mars. The MRO science team labels these “fractures,” suggesting some past geological process caused the surface to crack in this manner, with those cracks widening with time due to erosion or sublimation.
The location of course tells us something about that process.
The red dot on the overview map to the right, located about midway between the Viking-1 and Pathfinder landing spots, marks this location inside Chryse Planitia, the lowland plain at the outlet from the vast canyons Valles Marineris and Kasei Valles.
The location is in the dry equatorial regions of Mars where orbital images have found little or no evidence of near surface ice. Thus, this pockmarked surface is dry, though its location at the outlet to these two canyons suggests it was once inundated by the catastrophic floods that scientists presently theorize poured forth from those canyons several billion years ago. Those floods could have deposited water here which froze and even sank into the dust-covered ground, causing many ice droplets everywhere. Could the many small holes now indicate spots where that ice once existed, but as the equatorial regions dried out sublimated away?
Maybe, but that doesn’t explain the fractures. Nor have I any theory as to their formation.
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.
Looks more like sand dunes to me. Some sort of wind process moving dry material thru canyons and craters.
Miner Clay: Yup, those are ripple sand dunes in the fractures. That doesn’t explain however what caused the fractures themselves.