The really really strange landscape of Cydonia on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what the camera team describes merely as “landforms.”
In truth, these features, as well as almost everything in the surrounding terrain beyond the edge of this picture, are possibly the weirdest geological features on Mars. The two mounds, no more than fifteen feet high at the most, resemble pimples. The rough ground to the north actually appears to be some flow that worked its way around the mounds, as indicated by the arrows. The crack to the southeast of the two mounds appears to be an extension of a fault line that cuts through the center of the larger mound, suggesting the mound is some form of eruption belching out of that fissure.
That the latitude is 42 degrees north, these weird features all suggest some form of ice-based volcanic activity, because the ground here is probably impregnated with ice.
As for the bridge connecting the two mounds, who knows what caused it?
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, inside the Cydonai region where the mesa that is the non-face of Mars is located. The rectangle in the inset indicates the area covered by this picture.
The inset sadly does not do a good job of showing the variety of weird features in this region. You have many similar pimples scattered about randomly, plus many larger fissures resembling the polygon cracks seen on dried mud. (As you move south the network of those cracks gets larger and more extensive, and is dubbed the Cydonia Labyrinthus.) Every crater in the region has a large splash apron, as if the impact had occurred on slushy ice.
The triangular arrangement of ridges about two miles to the east of these mounds is baffling in its own right, as it contains its own collection of weirdly shaped mounds, bumps, and flows. It might be material that poured out of those scattered fissures, but if so it did so in ways unlike any volcanic flow I’ve ever seen.
All in all, this region resembles the surface of a strange stew, frozen suddenly while it bubbled and steamed during cooking. Its strangeness I think explains why so many people were fascinated with the geology of the Cydonia region after a 1976 photo taken by the Viking-1 orbiter suggested the mesa looked like a face. Those early orbital pictures could only hint at the weird terrain, which simply fueled the wild speculations of alien cities.
We now know without doubt there are no alien cities here, and that the face on Mars was simply a mesa whose shadows implied a face in low resolution. We also know now without doubt that the geology here is still utterly alien, even without those cities.
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, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what the camera team describes merely as “landforms.”
In truth, these features, as well as almost everything in the surrounding terrain beyond the edge of this picture, are possibly the weirdest geological features on Mars. The two mounds, no more than fifteen feet high at the most, resemble pimples. The rough ground to the north actually appears to be some flow that worked its way around the mounds, as indicated by the arrows. The crack to the southeast of the two mounds appears to be an extension of a fault line that cuts through the center of the larger mound, suggesting the mound is some form of eruption belching out of that fissure.
That the latitude is 42 degrees north, these weird features all suggest some form of ice-based volcanic activity, because the ground here is probably impregnated with ice.
As for the bridge connecting the two mounds, who knows what caused it?
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, inside the Cydonai region where the mesa that is the non-face of Mars is located. The rectangle in the inset indicates the area covered by this picture.
The inset sadly does not do a good job of showing the variety of weird features in this region. You have many similar pimples scattered about randomly, plus many larger fissures resembling the polygon cracks seen on dried mud. (As you move south the network of those cracks gets larger and more extensive, and is dubbed the Cydonia Labyrinthus.) Every crater in the region has a large splash apron, as if the impact had occurred on slushy ice.
The triangular arrangement of ridges about two miles to the east of these mounds is baffling in its own right, as it contains its own collection of weirdly shaped mounds, bumps, and flows. It might be material that poured out of those scattered fissures, but if so it did so in ways unlike any volcanic flow I’ve ever seen.
All in all, this region resembles the surface of a strange stew, frozen suddenly while it bubbled and steamed during cooking. Its strangeness I think explains why so many people were fascinated with the geology of the Cydonia region after a 1976 photo taken by the Viking-1 orbiter suggested the mesa looked like a face. Those early orbital pictures could only hint at the weird terrain, which simply fueled the wild speculations of alien cities.
We now know without doubt there are no alien cities here, and that the face on Mars was simply a mesa whose shadows implied a face in low resolution. We also know now without doubt that the geology here is still utterly alien, even without those cities.
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
Could Mars have many volcanoes with liquid water being the lava.
Is possible to rock lava flow without there being water with it.
Google search: volcanoes and permafrost
https://www.nps.gov/articles/volcanoes-and-permafrost.htm
gbalkie asked, “Could Mars have many volcanoes with liquid water being the lava?”
The answer is yes. In fact, there is extensive evidence throughout Mars at all latitudes above 30 degrees of cryo-volcanic ice features such as we see here. There is also ample evidence of volcanic activity where ice and lava interacted.
Ok, any recent ones?
It seems to me, you want a Mars settlement near one.
gbaikie: Your question suggests you are very new here. Welcome.
If you do a search on Behind the Black for “Mars” and “glaciers” you will learn a great deal about this subject. Two articles that I recommend immediately are these:
Back to Mars’ glacier country
SpaceX completes 1st round of Starship’s Mars landing site images
The second link gives some of the reasoning behind this landing site choice, which mostly centers on two points: 1), the relatively flat terrain making landing easier, and 2) the presence of near surface water ice everywhere.
As I said, it has become very evident in the past few years from orbital data that above 30 degrees latitude the surface (especially in the northern hemisphere) is well impregnated with near-surface ice.
The issue on Mars is not finding water. It is readily available. Mars is not a dry desert like the Sahara or like the movies or like the way most uneducated press journalists think. It is more like Antarctica, very dry only because its very ample supplies of water are locked up in ice. Do a little digging and a bit of processing, and you will have plenty to drink.
Well, a bit of newbie to this blog. Your links:
“This glacier however is likely not active today. Instead it still exists because it is buried by a veneer of dust and debris, that insulates it from the Sun and prevents it from sublimating away. It is probably more than a million years since this glacier moved, during the last time when Mars’ inclination was more than about 30 degrees and as great as 60 degrees. ”
Well that seems fairly “recent”. I would call any eruption within 50 million years as “recent”.
But Mars is ancient surface, and one might also call within 1 billion years as “recent”.
I know there is lots of ice, but think finding underground liquid water {even if brine] as important.
Let me guess—something at 19.5 degrees…Hoaxland will get ideas.
gbaikie: The other component of Mars is its endless climate cycles, caused by orbital mechanics. See this post:
The Martian cycles of climate change, as shown in just one crater
The graph at the link shows hundreds of cycles in the past 80 million years where orbital shifts would have caused Mars glaciers to grow and shrink. Right now there is little or no activity because of the planet’s present rotational tilt, about 25 degrees (about the same as Earth). When it is higher or lower, something that has happened frequently in the past, those glaciers change.
In other words, Mars’ glaciers have been active, and this has occurred several times in the past five million years.
Bob,
I bet those in the shadows edited out the juicy bits in Cydonia.
Maybe analogous to mud volcanoes here? A number around the southern part of the Salton Sea. Would be an interesting exercise to calculate the viscosity of material on Mars that would create a feature with those dimensions and height.