Strange terrain in the Martian lowlands
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) yesterday released a new captioned image, entitled “Disrupted Sediments in Acidalia Planitia”, noting that the photo
…shows a pitted, blocky surface, but also more unusually, it has contorted, irregular features.
Although there are impact craters in this area, some of the features … are too irregular to be relic impact craters or river channels. One possibility is that sedimentary layers have been warped from below to create these patterns. The freezing and thawing of subsurface ice is a mechanism that could have caused this.
The image to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows the lower quarter of the full image. While in some areas it does appear as if changes below the surface caused the surface to warp and collapse, as suggested by the caption, in other places it looks more like the top layers themselves sublimated away without disturbing what was below them.
Note for example the pits near the bottom of the photograph. They clearly show sedimentary layers on their cliff walls, including the tiny circular mesa in the middle of the rightmost pit.
If these pits were collapsing from below, their cliffs would be more disturbed, because it would have been those lower layers that sublimated first. Instead, it appears that the top layer disappeared first, followed by each lower layer, one by one.
This region of strange terrain is located in the middle of the northern lowland plains. The overview map below gives some context, with the small white box showing this photo’s location.
At about 44 degrees latitude, this feature is on the edge of a low rise in those lowlands, about twenty miles wide, where similar features were seen in an earlier MRO high resolution image.
For scale, note that you could put between two and three North American continents on top of this map, and still have spare room. The distance from this feature to the closest point at the edge of the blue-colored northern lowlands is about equal to the distance from New York to St. Louis. There is a lot of territory here, much of it still not looked at by any high resolution camera.
At this latitude scientists have found a great deal of evidence of ice, either as buried glaciers or an underground ice table. In some places in the northern lowlands, such as SpaceX’s favored primary landing site for Starship, that ice is so close to the surface one scientist has said that “I think you could dig anywhere to get your water ice.”
At this place it looks as if water ice probably played a part in shaping this terrain. How it did so however remains unclear. While it is possible to make some reasonable guesses, we do not have enough data to make any firm ones, yet.
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.
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) yesterday released a new captioned image, entitled “Disrupted Sediments in Acidalia Planitia”, noting that the photo
…shows a pitted, blocky surface, but also more unusually, it has contorted, irregular features.
Although there are impact craters in this area, some of the features … are too irregular to be relic impact craters or river channels. One possibility is that sedimentary layers have been warped from below to create these patterns. The freezing and thawing of subsurface ice is a mechanism that could have caused this.
The image to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows the lower quarter of the full image. While in some areas it does appear as if changes below the surface caused the surface to warp and collapse, as suggested by the caption, in other places it looks more like the top layers themselves sublimated away without disturbing what was below them.
Note for example the pits near the bottom of the photograph. They clearly show sedimentary layers on their cliff walls, including the tiny circular mesa in the middle of the rightmost pit.
If these pits were collapsing from below, their cliffs would be more disturbed, because it would have been those lower layers that sublimated first. Instead, it appears that the top layer disappeared first, followed by each lower layer, one by one.
This region of strange terrain is located in the middle of the northern lowland plains. The overview map below gives some context, with the small white box showing this photo’s location.
At about 44 degrees latitude, this feature is on the edge of a low rise in those lowlands, about twenty miles wide, where similar features were seen in an earlier MRO high resolution image.
For scale, note that you could put between two and three North American continents on top of this map, and still have spare room. The distance from this feature to the closest point at the edge of the blue-colored northern lowlands is about equal to the distance from New York to St. Louis. There is a lot of territory here, much of it still not looked at by any high resolution camera.
At this latitude scientists have found a great deal of evidence of ice, either as buried glaciers or an underground ice table. In some places in the northern lowlands, such as SpaceX’s favored primary landing site for Starship, that ice is so close to the surface one scientist has said that “I think you could dig anywhere to get your water ice.”
At this place it looks as if water ice probably played a part in shaping this terrain. How it did so however remains unclear. While it is possible to make some reasonable guesses, we do not have enough data to make any firm ones, yet.
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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