Martian layers everywhere!
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the left, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 1, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the rim edge to a fifteen-mile-wide canyon, with many apparent layers exposed on the high plateau.
The layers are intriguing in that they suggest several things. First, they give us a glimpse into the top and youngest layers that make up the interior canyon wall. Second, they tell us that erosion has removed much of those top and youngest layers, resulting in the mesas on that plateau.
Finally, the gullies flowing down into the canyon indicate further erosion processes, eating away at the canyon wall over time.
The location of this canyon is also intriguing.
The small white rectangle in the southern part of Argyre Basin marks the location of this canyon. It is a strange teardrop-shaped canyon, suggesting some form of flow from the south to the north that washed away part of the basin’s floor.
Argyre Basin is the second largest basin on Mars, about 1,100 miles in diameter with its lowest elevation 17,000 feet below the surrounding southern cratered highlands. It is believed to have been formed by a giant impact billions of years ago. Since that impact this particular canyon formed, and it appears to have formed by some underground drainage flowing down from the mountains to the south. Since the basin sits entirely within the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude band where many glaciers are found on Mars, assuming a glacier was a factor in forming this canyon is entirely reasonable, though obviously unproven at this time.
That there does not appear to be any obvious glacial material at this location in the full MRO image illustrates the uncertainty of this assumption. Yet, glaciers are found in this region. If they are not here now, they could likely have been here in the past, and thus might explain the canyon’s formation and later erosion processes.
The canyon’s shape also suggests the possibility that it formed by flowing water. It surely looks like the kinds of resurgences one sees in limestone karst regions on Earth, where underground rivers reach the surface as springs, and then subsequently flow on the surface, carving out canyons.
There is no water here now, however, either as liquid or ice. Figuring out the layers and formation of this canyon cannot be easily understood until someone can walk along its walls and take rock samples, in great numbers.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID 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. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
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.
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the left, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 1, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the rim edge to a fifteen-mile-wide canyon, with many apparent layers exposed on the high plateau.
The layers are intriguing in that they suggest several things. First, they give us a glimpse into the top and youngest layers that make up the interior canyon wall. Second, they tell us that erosion has removed much of those top and youngest layers, resulting in the mesas on that plateau.
Finally, the gullies flowing down into the canyon indicate further erosion processes, eating away at the canyon wall over time.
The location of this canyon is also intriguing.
The small white rectangle in the southern part of Argyre Basin marks the location of this canyon. It is a strange teardrop-shaped canyon, suggesting some form of flow from the south to the north that washed away part of the basin’s floor.
Argyre Basin is the second largest basin on Mars, about 1,100 miles in diameter with its lowest elevation 17,000 feet below the surrounding southern cratered highlands. It is believed to have been formed by a giant impact billions of years ago. Since that impact this particular canyon formed, and it appears to have formed by some underground drainage flowing down from the mountains to the south. Since the basin sits entirely within the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude band where many glaciers are found on Mars, assuming a glacier was a factor in forming this canyon is entirely reasonable, though obviously unproven at this time.
That there does not appear to be any obvious glacial material at this location in the full MRO image illustrates the uncertainty of this assumption. Yet, glaciers are found in this region. If they are not here now, they could likely have been here in the past, and thus might explain the canyon’s formation and later erosion processes.
The canyon’s shape also suggests the possibility that it formed by flowing water. It surely looks like the kinds of resurgences one sees in limestone karst regions on Earth, where underground rivers reach the surface as springs, and then subsequently flow on the surface, carving out canyons.
There is no water here now, however, either as liquid or ice. Figuring out the layers and formation of this canyon cannot be easily understood until someone can walk along its walls and take rock samples, in great numbers.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID 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. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
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.
Some martian colonists from Earth will be geologists. Geo: earth.
What are martian geologists going to be called? Dejahologists?
Aresologists?
Mangalogists?