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.
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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.
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.
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