A squeezed Martian landscape
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 20, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label “tilted blocks in the low northern latitudes.”
At first glance this circle of tilted blocks appear to mark a place where something erupted from below, pushing and cracking the blocks away in all directions. If there was an eruption however it appears very little if anything poured out from below. Instead, the ground inside the hollow in the center is about the same elevation as the ground surrounding the tilted blocks.
Clearly some pressure from below pushed these surface blocks upward to crack and tilt, but the answer cannot be found in this close-up picture. Instead, we need to look wider, not only at the overview map below, but at the inset on that overview map.
The white dot on the map to the right marks the location, about 300 miles southwest from the foot of the giant volcano Olympus Mons, and clearly on the lava flows that surround this volcano. In the inset, created from a global mosaic of all of MRO’s lower resolution context camera images, the white rectangle indicates the area covered by the picture above.
Note the white north-south dotted line in the inset that cuts through that box. This line marks the top of a faint and very low ridgeline, on which the circle of tilted blocks above sits. Though they are hard to see, the inset shows other cracked or tilted blocks both on this ridge and to its west.
All together, the evidence suggests these blocks were tilted and cracked when underground magma applied vertical pressure from below. Furthermore, the location near Olympus Mons and that north-south ridge suggests additional horizontal pressure was imposed, squeezing the surface to form a wrinkle ridge. The hard lava that formed the surface had to go somewhere, and thus it formed that ridge where the ground cracked.
This superficial explanation might explain what happened, but it doesn’t tell us much about the long term geological history. The hardened surface was formed first it appears, and then was reshaped by later volcanic events. We do not know however if these events related to Olympus, if at all.
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.
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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.
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 20, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label “tilted blocks in the low northern latitudes.”
At first glance this circle of tilted blocks appear to mark a place where something erupted from below, pushing and cracking the blocks away in all directions. If there was an eruption however it appears very little if anything poured out from below. Instead, the ground inside the hollow in the center is about the same elevation as the ground surrounding the tilted blocks.
Clearly some pressure from below pushed these surface blocks upward to crack and tilt, but the answer cannot be found in this close-up picture. Instead, we need to look wider, not only at the overview map below, but at the inset on that overview map.
The white dot on the map to the right marks the location, about 300 miles southwest from the foot of the giant volcano Olympus Mons, and clearly on the lava flows that surround this volcano. In the inset, created from a global mosaic of all of MRO’s lower resolution context camera images, the white rectangle indicates the area covered by the picture above.
Note the white north-south dotted line in the inset that cuts through that box. This line marks the top of a faint and very low ridgeline, on which the circle of tilted blocks above sits. Though they are hard to see, the inset shows other cracked or tilted blocks both on this ridge and to its west.
All together, the evidence suggests these blocks were tilted and cracked when underground magma applied vertical pressure from below. Furthermore, the location near Olympus Mons and that north-south ridge suggests additional horizontal pressure was imposed, squeezing the surface to form a wrinkle ridge. The hard lava that formed the surface had to go somewhere, and thus it formed that ridge where the ground cracked.
This superficial explanation might explain what happened, but it doesn’t tell us much about the long term geological history. The hardened surface was formed first it appears, and then was reshaped by later volcanic events. We do not know however if these events related to Olympus, if at all.
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.
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