The edge of a vast frozen lava sea on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 10, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label boringly “Lava Interactions with Landscape.”
What is the lava, and what is the landscape? Here’s is my initial guess, based simply on looking at this image alone. The mound in the middle is the landscape, the rounded top of a very ancient mountain or hill. The flat plain that surrounds it is flood lava, that in the far past poured in and mostly buried the mountain.
Everything here signals a very old terrain. To get this mountain worn so smooth from the thin Martian atmosphere has to have taken more than a billion years. And that flood lava has to also be as old, because of the number of craters on its surface. I don’t know the impact rate, but I know it takes time to accumulate this number of impacts.
The sense of age is further underlined by the moat that surrounds the hill. When that lava poured in, it would have flooded right up to the mountain slope. Over time the weakest section of lava, most prone to erosion, would be that contact point. To wear it away as we now see it must have taken many eons.
All these speculations are a very unreliable guesses. To get a better understanding of this terrain it is essential we look at more than this picture alone.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location. The inset shows the area in the white box in detail.
Very obviously, this location marks the outermost edge of the vast flood lava plain that surrounds Mars’ giant volcanoes, with Arsia Mons the nearest and also thought to be one of the youngest. Though researchers believe that the caldera at the summit was most active about 150 million years ago, the flood plain that surrounds all these giant volcanoes is estimated to have formed much earlier, from 3 to 3.7 billion years ago. It was then that this flood of lava poured out and covered everything right up to those mountains and craters only a few miles to the west.
The rounded hills in this picture have to be even older. We are therefore looking at some very primeval Martian terrain, far older than my initial estimate of a billion years. It marks a time almost four billion years ago when Mars was a planet of erupting volcanoes and seas of molton lava, now frozen.
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 original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 10, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label boringly “Lava Interactions with Landscape.”
What is the lava, and what is the landscape? Here’s is my initial guess, based simply on looking at this image alone. The mound in the middle is the landscape, the rounded top of a very ancient mountain or hill. The flat plain that surrounds it is flood lava, that in the far past poured in and mostly buried the mountain.
Everything here signals a very old terrain. To get this mountain worn so smooth from the thin Martian atmosphere has to have taken more than a billion years. And that flood lava has to also be as old, because of the number of craters on its surface. I don’t know the impact rate, but I know it takes time to accumulate this number of impacts.
The sense of age is further underlined by the moat that surrounds the hill. When that lava poured in, it would have flooded right up to the mountain slope. Over time the weakest section of lava, most prone to erosion, would be that contact point. To wear it away as we now see it must have taken many eons.
All these speculations are a very unreliable guesses. To get a better understanding of this terrain it is essential we look at more than this picture alone.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location. The inset shows the area in the white box in detail.
Very obviously, this location marks the outermost edge of the vast flood lava plain that surrounds Mars’ giant volcanoes, with Arsia Mons the nearest and also thought to be one of the youngest. Though researchers believe that the caldera at the summit was most active about 150 million years ago, the flood plain that surrounds all these giant volcanoes is estimated to have formed much earlier, from 3 to 3.7 billion years ago. It was then that this flood of lava poured out and covered everything right up to those mountains and craters only a few miles to the west.
The rounded hills in this picture have to be even older. We are therefore looking at some very primeval Martian terrain, far older than my initial estimate of a billion years. It marks a time almost four billion years ago when Mars was a planet of erupting volcanoes and seas of molton lava, now frozen.
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.
Readers: the rules for commenting!
No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.
However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.
Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.