The sagging flank of one of Mars’ giant volcanoes
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 1, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels a “chain of pit craters in [a] graben”.
A graben is a surface fissure created when the surface either spreads or two sections shift sideways in opposite directions. The chain of pits suggest that there is a larger void below into which the surface is sinking. It is also likely that a lot of the sinking material is volcanic ash, thrown free in an eruption hundreds of millions of years ago, which over the eons has been blown up to this location to settle in the crack to fill it. It is now trapped there, and sinking.
What caused the ground here to shift and create the fissure? In this case, the cause is quite large and massive, in a way that boggles the mind.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, on the western flank of the giant Martian volcano Elysium Mons. The rectangle in the inset indicates the area covered by the picture above. That the fissure cuts at right angles to the slope tells us that the chain of pits is not signaling an underground lava tube. Such tubes will flow downhill, not at right angles to the grade.
Instead, this graben appears to be an expression of the movement of the entire slope downhill to the west, causing numerous similar parallel fissures. If you look closely at the inset you can see these parallel fissures, all at right angles to the slope and curved to match the shape of the volcano itself.
Essentially, the western flank of Elysium Mons is sagging downhill, and as it does so these cracks have formed.
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, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 1, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels a “chain of pit craters in [a] graben”.
A graben is a surface fissure created when the surface either spreads or two sections shift sideways in opposite directions. The chain of pits suggest that there is a larger void below into which the surface is sinking. It is also likely that a lot of the sinking material is volcanic ash, thrown free in an eruption hundreds of millions of years ago, which over the eons has been blown up to this location to settle in the crack to fill it. It is now trapped there, and sinking.
What caused the ground here to shift and create the fissure? In this case, the cause is quite large and massive, in a way that boggles the mind.
The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, on the western flank of the giant Martian volcano Elysium Mons. The rectangle in the inset indicates the area covered by the picture above. That the fissure cuts at right angles to the slope tells us that the chain of pits is not signaling an underground lava tube. Such tubes will flow downhill, not at right angles to the grade.
Instead, this graben appears to be an expression of the movement of the entire slope downhill to the west, causing numerous similar parallel fissures. If you look closely at the inset you can see these parallel fissures, all at right angles to the slope and curved to match the shape of the volcano itself.
Essentially, the western flank of Elysium Mons is sagging downhill, and as it does so these cracks have formed.
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
Gravity sucks, even at only 1/3 of a G! : )
Can only find one slope streak. I didn’t think it could occur in this location.