Craters in a row
Click for original image.
Cool image time from Mars! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It highlights a string of craters, all lined up in an almost straight line.
Were these craters caused by the impact of an asteroid that broke up as it burned its way through the thin Martian atmosphere? The lack of any raised rims argues instead that these are sinks produced not from impact but from a collapse into a void below, possibly a fault line.
Yet, almost all of the craters in this image, even those not part of this crater string, show no raised rims. If sinks, the voids below don’t seem to follow any pattern, which once again argues in favor of random impacts, with the string produced by a bolide breaking up just prior to hitting the ground.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks this location. The rectangle in the inset shows in the area covered by the picture above.
The overview map also gives some additional hints about the origin of this crater string. It is located on the relatively flat plateau that begins the southern cratered highlands to the south, indicated by yellow to note its higher elevation. Across that entire plateau are many random craters like this string, almost all lacking raised rims.
The inset also shows a large unnamed 25-mile-wide crater about 17 miles to the northwest. This large crater has a raised rim as well as central peaks, strongly suggesting it was caused by an impact. Furthermore, the context map on the picture’s webpage shows similar large craters surrounding this plateau. Thus, the plateau’s scattered small craters, including this string, could have formed as secondary impacts from the ejected material from the surrounding large impacts.
But why do these small craters lack raised rims? The answer to this mystery probably lies with the latitude, 40 degrees north. This is glacier country. On the southern cratered highlands here it is very possible that the ground is heavily impregnated with ice. The secondary impacts would have hit this ground while still hot, so rather than create a normal crater the material simply melted that ice and sank downward. Think of what happens when you drop boiling water on ice.
I am guessing however. We would need to know more about the chemistry of this ground, which might contain ice but then might not.
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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3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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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 from Mars! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on October 13, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It highlights a string of craters, all lined up in an almost straight line.
Were these craters caused by the impact of an asteroid that broke up as it burned its way through the thin Martian atmosphere? The lack of any raised rims argues instead that these are sinks produced not from impact but from a collapse into a void below, possibly a fault line.
Yet, almost all of the craters in this image, even those not part of this crater string, show no raised rims. If sinks, the voids below don’t seem to follow any pattern, which once again argues in favor of random impacts, with the string produced by a bolide breaking up just prior to hitting the ground.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks this location. The rectangle in the inset shows in the area covered by the picture above.
The overview map also gives some additional hints about the origin of this crater string. It is located on the relatively flat plateau that begins the southern cratered highlands to the south, indicated by yellow to note its higher elevation. Across that entire plateau are many random craters like this string, almost all lacking raised rims.
The inset also shows a large unnamed 25-mile-wide crater about 17 miles to the northwest. This large crater has a raised rim as well as central peaks, strongly suggesting it was caused by an impact. Furthermore, the context map on the picture’s webpage shows similar large craters surrounding this plateau. Thus, the plateau’s scattered small craters, including this string, could have formed as secondary impacts from the ejected material from the surrounding large impacts.
But why do these small craters lack raised rims? The answer to this mystery probably lies with the latitude, 40 degrees north. This is glacier country. On the southern cratered highlands here it is very possible that the ground is heavily impregnated with ice. The secondary impacts would have hit this ground while still hot, so rather than create a normal crater the material simply melted that ice and sank downward. Think of what happens when you drop boiling water on ice.
I am guessing however. We would need to know more about the chemistry of this ground, which might contain ice but then might not.
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.
We saw that with Shoemaker-Levy 9.
Jupiter breaks one up…then machine guns Mars instead by slingshoting them back.
An example of how evenly spaced linear alignment of multiple bodies on the same trajectory can be brief.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41Kq36GouaE
I’m going with impact. Interesting how the craters form a rough mirror image around a medial line, and the impact is weighted to one side. Probably make some reasonable assumptions about the impactor composition from that.