Big Martian gullies partly filled with glacial material
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists dub as “large gullies with infilled alcoves.”
Gullies on Mars were one of the first discoveries by orbiters of small-scalle potential water-caused features on the Red Planet. The favorite explanation for their formation today involves the seasonal freeze-thaw cycle, combined with the deposition of ice and dry ice frost in the winter. When that ice and dry ice sublimates away in the spring it causes collapse and erosion, widening the gullies.
These gullies also exhibit evidence that underground and glacial ice might contribute as well. The material in the largest gullies looks like a mixture of glacial material and dust and debris. It could also be that there is ice impregnated in the ground, which can cause large collapses when it sublimates away.
The white rectangle on the overview map and inset above marks the location of this picture, on the western rim of a 13-mile-wide unnamed crater inside the western portion of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip on Mars I dub glacier country, since every image from orbit shows evidence of glaciers.
This picture is no different, as the horizontal cracks at the base of the crater rim suggests the glacier that fills the crater floor is being pulled apart by gravity at its edges. The elevation drop from the top of the rim to the floor is about 3,200 feet, so any ice on that slope will definitely be stressed by gravity. Such cracks are therefore not surprising.
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists dub as “large gullies with infilled alcoves.”
Gullies on Mars were one of the first discoveries by orbiters of small-scalle potential water-caused features on the Red Planet. The favorite explanation for their formation today involves the seasonal freeze-thaw cycle, combined with the deposition of ice and dry ice frost in the winter. When that ice and dry ice sublimates away in the spring it causes collapse and erosion, widening the gullies.
These gullies also exhibit evidence that underground and glacial ice might contribute as well. The material in the largest gullies looks like a mixture of glacial material and dust and debris. It could also be that there is ice impregnated in the ground, which can cause large collapses when it sublimates away.
The white rectangle on the overview map and inset above marks the location of this picture, on the western rim of a 13-mile-wide unnamed crater inside the western portion of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip on Mars I dub glacier country, since every image from orbit shows evidence of glaciers.
This picture is no different, as the horizontal cracks at the base of the crater rim suggests the glacier that fills the crater floor is being pulled apart by gravity at its edges. The elevation drop from the top of the rim to the floor is about 3,200 feet, so any ice on that slope will definitely be stressed by gravity. Such cracks are therefore not surprising.
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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