Frozen waves of Martian lava?
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 17, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this a terrain sample image, which implies it was taken not as part of any specific request, but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature.
What are we looking at? This stippled terrain with curved ridges actually extends quite a distance beyond this image. A MRO context camera picture taken on July 22, 2020 shows its full extent, about 10 miles wide but extending to the north and south about 30 miles total, butting up against a north-south mountain chain to its east that is about seventy miles long with its highest peak about 8,000 feet above this plain.
The white dot southwest of the giant volcano Arsia Mons on the overview map to the right marks this location, on the outside edge of the vast flood lava plains laid down by Mars’ giant volcanoes. Therefore it is very reasonable that this stippled terrain is hardened flood lava.
As for the many small random ridges as well as the long curved ridges, my wild guess is that we are looking at frozen lava waves. On Mars lava is less viscous than on Earth, and flows more like water. Before this lava hardened it appears its surface was literally like a rough ocean of waves, with the two long curves two larger waves flowing towards the mountain shoreline to the east. When the lava hardened the shape of all these waves was retained.
You can definitely get an understanding of why I have come to this conclusion by looking at the context camera picture. Scan up and down that lava shoreline. You can see many such curved ridges, as if a series of big waves (the kind that surfers lust after) suddenly froze in place as they flowed toward the mountain chain.
Of course, I am making a very wild guess. The features here could be formed by many other processes, including ones having nothing to do with freezing lava. I just like it because it appeals to my artistic nature.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 17, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this a terrain sample image, which implies it was taken not as part of any specific request, but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature.
What are we looking at? This stippled terrain with curved ridges actually extends quite a distance beyond this image. A MRO context camera picture taken on July 22, 2020 shows its full extent, about 10 miles wide but extending to the north and south about 30 miles total, butting up against a north-south mountain chain to its east that is about seventy miles long with its highest peak about 8,000 feet above this plain.
The white dot southwest of the giant volcano Arsia Mons on the overview map to the right marks this location, on the outside edge of the vast flood lava plains laid down by Mars’ giant volcanoes. Therefore it is very reasonable that this stippled terrain is hardened flood lava.
As for the many small random ridges as well as the long curved ridges, my wild guess is that we are looking at frozen lava waves. On Mars lava is less viscous than on Earth, and flows more like water. Before this lava hardened it appears its surface was literally like a rough ocean of waves, with the two long curves two larger waves flowing towards the mountain shoreline to the east. When the lava hardened the shape of all these waves was retained.
You can definitely get an understanding of why I have come to this conclusion by looking at the context camera picture. Scan up and down that lava shoreline. You can see many such curved ridges, as if a series of big waves (the kind that surfers lust after) suddenly froze in place as they flowed toward the mountain chain.
Of course, I am making a very wild guess. The features here could be formed by many other processes, including ones having nothing to do with freezing lava. I just like it because it appeals to my artistic nature.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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