The splatter surrounding a mid-latitude Martian crater
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 12, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists simply label as “Northern Mid-latitude Terrain”.
I have focused in on that meandering channel and the landscape around it. On Earth we would assume that channel marks the drainage of a river or stream, possibly also shaped by a glacier at some point because of its U-shaped profile. This guess is strengthened by the elevation data from MRO, which shows the channel descending to the southwest about 440 feet along its 2.2 mile length.
The channel and the eroded look of the surrounding terrain suggests strongly the presence of near-surface ice at this location, which is not unreasonable based on its 32 degree north latitude. The wider look below only adds further strength to this hypothesis, but also adds a lot more details explaining the genesis of this strange landscape.
On the overview map to the right the red dot in Arabia Terra marks the location. Though significantly south of glacier country, this location is still north of 30 degrees latitude, the dividing line between Mars’ icy polar regions and its dry equatorial tropics. However, being close to 30 degrees latitude we are also in a region where the surface is beginning to dry out, and the evidence of underground ice is found farther below ground.
The second image to the right illustrates this. This image is from a global mosaic created by Murray Lab at Caltech using the entire archive of context camera images from MRO. That mosaic not only includes MRO elevation data, it shows the context camera images from an oblique angle, looking to the north.
The small white box in the center left marks the approximate area covered by the first picture above, on the western flanks of an unnamed 25-mile wide crater. The wide apron around that crater gives it a splattered look, not unlike many craters found in the much more icy northern lowland plains. At the same time, many of the other craters nearby do not have that splattered look, and instead appear as if their impact had occurred when the ground was either dryer, or any near surface ice was deeper underground.
The channel as well as the eroded terrain around it form part of that splatter, and suggest we are looking at the aftermath of that impact, when the underground ice here was quickly melted by the heat of impact as well as excavated upwards to the surface. The ice probably ran both as liquid water for a short time in the channel, and then froze into a glacier that carved its way downhill. In later eons the ice in the channel as well as the ice on the plateau above sublimated away, leaving this rough eroded landscape.
At least that’s my uneducated theory. I gladly invite better educated geologists to correct me and provide us all a better theory.
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, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 12, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists simply label as “Northern Mid-latitude Terrain”.
I have focused in on that meandering channel and the landscape around it. On Earth we would assume that channel marks the drainage of a river or stream, possibly also shaped by a glacier at some point because of its U-shaped profile. This guess is strengthened by the elevation data from MRO, which shows the channel descending to the southwest about 440 feet along its 2.2 mile length.
The channel and the eroded look of the surrounding terrain suggests strongly the presence of near-surface ice at this location, which is not unreasonable based on its 32 degree north latitude. The wider look below only adds further strength to this hypothesis, but also adds a lot more details explaining the genesis of this strange landscape.
On the overview map to the right the red dot in Arabia Terra marks the location. Though significantly south of glacier country, this location is still north of 30 degrees latitude, the dividing line between Mars’ icy polar regions and its dry equatorial tropics. However, being close to 30 degrees latitude we are also in a region where the surface is beginning to dry out, and the evidence of underground ice is found farther below ground.
The second image to the right illustrates this. This image is from a global mosaic created by Murray Lab at Caltech using the entire archive of context camera images from MRO. That mosaic not only includes MRO elevation data, it shows the context camera images from an oblique angle, looking to the north.
The small white box in the center left marks the approximate area covered by the first picture above, on the western flanks of an unnamed 25-mile wide crater. The wide apron around that crater gives it a splattered look, not unlike many craters found in the much more icy northern lowland plains. At the same time, many of the other craters nearby do not have that splattered look, and instead appear as if their impact had occurred when the ground was either dryer, or any near surface ice was deeper underground.
The channel as well as the eroded terrain around it form part of that splatter, and suggest we are looking at the aftermath of that impact, when the underground ice here was quickly melted by the heat of impact as well as excavated upwards to the surface. The ice probably ran both as liquid water for a short time in the channel, and then froze into a glacier that carved its way downhill. In later eons the ice in the channel as well as the ice on the plateau above sublimated away, leaving this rough eroded landscape.
At least that’s my uneducated theory. I gladly invite better educated geologists to correct me and provide us all a better theory.
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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