Another “What the heck?!” image on Mars
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image, taken on September 2, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and cropped and reduced to post here, is one that I will make very little attempt to explain. It falls into a category I call “What the heck?!” The uncaptioned website labels this “Ringed Ridges in Kasei Valles”, which merely describes what we see.
This isn’t an impact crater. The rings don’t fit any morphology I’ve ever seen for such features.
Could we be looking at some type of glacial feature? The latitude, 29 degrees north, makes this unlikely but possible. Even so, it sure doesn’t look like it. The ripples in the center and between the ridges are sand dunes, not glacial features.
Might this be a volcanic vent, with the concentric ridges marking multiple eruptions? Maybe, but if so I’ve never seen any volcanic vent or caldera that looked quite like this.
The overview map below gives some context, but hardly explains anything.
The white box north of the main channels of Kasei Valles marks the location of this strange feature.
The one major driving geological process that is thought to have shaped the Kasei Valley is that of one or more catastrophic floods, over many millions of years. One hypothesis [pdf] even suggests a large ice dam had formed across the canyon just before it turns east, creating a large lake that when the dam broke rushed eastward, creating the canyon’s braided channels.
Unfortunately, I can’t reconcile such floods with the strange concentric ridges above. The rings just don’t seem to have been formed or even reshaped by a catastrophic flood.
So what made this? While I suppose volcanism is the best guess, it is not one I have much enthusiasm for. My readers are welcome to make their own guesses, but I guarantee we will all be likely wrong in some manner.
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.
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Click for full image.
Today’s cool image, taken on September 2, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and cropped and reduced to post here, is one that I will make very little attempt to explain. It falls into a category I call “What the heck?!” The uncaptioned website labels this “Ringed Ridges in Kasei Valles”, which merely describes what we see.
This isn’t an impact crater. The rings don’t fit any morphology I’ve ever seen for such features.
Could we be looking at some type of glacial feature? The latitude, 29 degrees north, makes this unlikely but possible. Even so, it sure doesn’t look like it. The ripples in the center and between the ridges are sand dunes, not glacial features.
Might this be a volcanic vent, with the concentric ridges marking multiple eruptions? Maybe, but if so I’ve never seen any volcanic vent or caldera that looked quite like this.
The overview map below gives some context, but hardly explains anything.
The white box north of the main channels of Kasei Valles marks the location of this strange feature.
The one major driving geological process that is thought to have shaped the Kasei Valley is that of one or more catastrophic floods, over many millions of years. One hypothesis [pdf] even suggests a large ice dam had formed across the canyon just before it turns east, creating a large lake that when the dam broke rushed eastward, creating the canyon’s braided channels.
Unfortunately, I can’t reconcile such floods with the strange concentric ridges above. The rings just don’t seem to have been formed or even reshaped by a catastrophic flood.
So what made this? While I suppose volcanism is the best guess, it is not one I have much enthusiasm for. My readers are welcome to make their own guesses, but I guarantee we will all be likely wrong in some manner.
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.
Robert, I think it must be a much eroded & sand-covered volcanic remnant. Take a look on Google Earth at the lower left corner of Egypt where it borders Libya – definitely ancient rocky caldera & not dissimilar in shape.
As you said… probably wrong!
Wormsign…the spice must flow!
What the heck, indeed.
If I didn’t know better, I’d advise whoever it was to see a dermatologist.
It reminds me of a mud volcano….. although I cannot really think of how a mud volcano could form, as this area once was almost definatly wet in the past, perhaps there is some possible geological process?
It reminds me of the way ice forms over a spring in a lake. The center would be the last to freeze with the water pushing up. Maybe it formed in the past and is now covered with sand.
About 1500m from the center of the “feature” at a bearing of ~45 degrees relative to the top of the page is an additional curious feature. I see a structure that is roughly “U” shaped with sharply defined ~95 degree angles off of the base. What geological processes could produce such a structure?
Allen: First, we should mention to the readers that this feature is visible in the full image, not in the cropped photo I featured.
Second, my guess is that we are looking at three depressions produced by faults. The ground is cracked, and material sinks at the breaks.
It is not unusual to see depressions with sharp angles like this on either Mars or Earth. There is even a geological term for them, dubbed grabens.
I should add that these cracks suggest again that the central ringed structure is volcanic. As it pushed upward, it cracked the ground around it.
It might have started as a Maar type eruption with ice dunes freezing into place with wind building up the rim-maybe seiche slosh and some creep too?