Martian mounds surrounded by moats
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 1, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the camera team labels “Circular Mounds Surrounded by Moats,” which when all the known data is considered are probably caused by a spray of small meteorites landing on a field of ice.
Why ice? The location is at 37 degrees south latitude, in the cratered southern highlands of Mars, where many images show glacial-type features inside many craters. In fact, all the nearby craters at this location appear to have such features, suggesting the presence of near-surface ice trapped in these craters.
The picture actually looks at the floor of another such crater, with the mounds in the image’s upper left the crater’s indistinct central peaks. Though only 8.5 miles wide, the crater is deep, with interior walls that quickly rise 2,800 feet to the rim. That depth further suggests ice, as any snow that fell here in the far past could easily become trapped, inside what could be thought of a cold trap.
The black dot in the inset on the overview map to the right marks this location. It seems to me that this spray of meteorites were likely secondary ejecta from another larger impact nearby. Hot from that impact, the rocks melted that ice, the rocks sunk slightly, and were left as we see them.
At least, that’s my guess. There are certainly other possibilities. What reinforces this hypothesis for me is seen in the full image, where there is one crater on top of one of the mounds inside the crater. suggesting this spray of impacts came after the ice was emplaced.
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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.
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Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 1, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the camera team labels “Circular Mounds Surrounded by Moats,” which when all the known data is considered are probably caused by a spray of small meteorites landing on a field of ice.
Why ice? The location is at 37 degrees south latitude, in the cratered southern highlands of Mars, where many images show glacial-type features inside many craters. In fact, all the nearby craters at this location appear to have such features, suggesting the presence of near-surface ice trapped in these craters.
The picture actually looks at the floor of another such crater, with the mounds in the image’s upper left the crater’s indistinct central peaks. Though only 8.5 miles wide, the crater is deep, with interior walls that quickly rise 2,800 feet to the rim. That depth further suggests ice, as any snow that fell here in the far past could easily become trapped, inside what could be thought of a cold trap.
The black dot in the inset on the overview map to the right marks this location. It seems to me that this spray of meteorites were likely secondary ejecta from another larger impact nearby. Hot from that impact, the rocks melted that ice, the rocks sunk slightly, and were left as we see them.
At least, that’s my guess. There are certainly other possibilities. What reinforces this hypothesis for me is seen in the full image, where there is one crater on top of one of the mounds inside the crater. suggesting this spray of impacts came after the ice was emplaced.
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.
There are the “Circular Mounds Surrounded by Moats“, and the distinct “Impact Craters” formed in different era’s in Mars distant past. The difference existing side-by-side in the immediate location might be important?
Although I agree with your guess, especially the hot ejecta as an plausible explanation for foaming the ice/mud, pushing up and away from the hot fragments, then refreezing and settling back into a mound with a moat…
Especially when the unusual moat phenomenon only occurs in the “glacier style fluid driven wall collapse” that flows down and fills the crater floor, as distinguished by the soft “ice cream melting” edges and flow lines.
When walls collapse at work, there’s often heat and steam escaping from the flow as it generates a lot of friction.
Due to the large size of this “Highwall failure”, an alternative guess, is the high friction heat melting the water table fluid substance into the mud that covers the crater floor… but also creating bubbles of steam/gas/air that come to the surface pushing/displacing the apron of fluid and mud around each bubble, (faintly visible) freezing in place then retreating/settling back down when the slide begins to cool creating the ring or moat that would also get deeper as evaporation consumes the ice. I admit, I’ve seen such formations in bubbling sulfur/glass/ metal or hot mud on earth, so I’m trying to make a connection using mostly imagination, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything on Mars.
But then it could be a combination of the two scenarios that the impact nearby knocked the wall down creating the mud flow that the hot ejecta landed in? Timing and circumstances perfect for this formation? This is fun.