The vast Martian plains of lava
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 31, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled “Lava Embaying Highlands Ridge”, it shows an alcove along a ridgeline that appears filled with material, in this case solid lava.
If you look closely at the ridgeline, you can see several dark streaks on its southern slopes. These streaks could be one of two unique Martian features that remain unexplained. They could be slope streaks, which occur randomly through the year and fade with time, or recurring slope lineae, which occur seasonally at the same locations. In either case, though the streaks look like avalanches, they don’t change the topography, have no debris piles at their base, and even sometimes flow uphill for short lengths. Though there are a number of theories for their formation, many involving dust, none has been accepted as confirmed.
This location and its lava however are the stars of this picture, for a number of reasons, all revealed by the overview map below.
The red dot on the map to the right marks the location, located near the epicenter of two of the largest quakes detected by the seismometer on the InSight lander. The rectangle in the inset shows the area covered by the picture above, near the end of one arm of this crescent shaped ridge.
Evidently, that crescent is what remains visible of an ancient 50-mile-wide crater, with most of its eastern rim now buried by the same lava flow that is pushed up against this ridgeline. That lava is part of one or many flood events that covered this part of Mars for 600 miles to the east over a region about 500 miles wide, and likely occurred from half to than a billion years ago. I don’t know where the vent or vents for this lava is located, but I am sure geologists have located several candidates in pouring over MRO images.
Though the surface here is generally smooth and featureless, as the lava is relatively young, the recent quakes suggest things are happening below ground. It could be that there is some volcanic activity here, or if not the ground is still settling from those past volcanic events.
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 January 31, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled “Lava Embaying Highlands Ridge”, it shows an alcove along a ridgeline that appears filled with material, in this case solid lava.
If you look closely at the ridgeline, you can see several dark streaks on its southern slopes. These streaks could be one of two unique Martian features that remain unexplained. They could be slope streaks, which occur randomly through the year and fade with time, or recurring slope lineae, which occur seasonally at the same locations. In either case, though the streaks look like avalanches, they don’t change the topography, have no debris piles at their base, and even sometimes flow uphill for short lengths. Though there are a number of theories for their formation, many involving dust, none has been accepted as confirmed.
This location and its lava however are the stars of this picture, for a number of reasons, all revealed by the overview map below.
The red dot on the map to the right marks the location, located near the epicenter of two of the largest quakes detected by the seismometer on the InSight lander. The rectangle in the inset shows the area covered by the picture above, near the end of one arm of this crescent shaped ridge.
Evidently, that crescent is what remains visible of an ancient 50-mile-wide crater, with most of its eastern rim now buried by the same lava flow that is pushed up against this ridgeline. That lava is part of one or many flood events that covered this part of Mars for 600 miles to the east over a region about 500 miles wide, and likely occurred from half to than a billion years ago. I don’t know where the vent or vents for this lava is located, but I am sure geologists have located several candidates in pouring over MRO images.
Though the surface here is generally smooth and featureless, as the lava is relatively young, the recent quakes suggest things are happening below ground. It could be that there is some volcanic activity here, or if not the ground is still settling from those past volcanic events.
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.
And this just in:
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/giant-ancient-volcano-discovered-on-mars/
From the post:
Similarly, the researchers think that the giant Noctis Mons volcano was built like a layered cake, alternating deposits of ice and volcanic material. The slopes of the mesas show evidence of this, because there salt deposits alternate with layers of volcanic material and now-solid lava flows.
Taken together, the eroded volcano and the remnant of the glacier suggest that the volcanic blanket in this large region may be concealing a vast sheet of glacier ice beneath its surface.
“Finding this interaction between buried glaciers and magmatism is very positive, and it’s connected with topics such as habitability and the likelihood of finding biosignatures,” Rodriguez says. “If it’s really true, it would be a very important discovery.”
Touching on some if the host of this site’s speculations about how geological processes “work” on Mars, there is also this:
This finding connects with the team’s previous discovery of a nearby sulfate-salt deposit, which has shapes and features resembling those of a glacier. Lee and his collaborator, graduate student Sourabh Shubham (University of Maryland, College Park), think that this glacier-like feature formed when a layer of volcanic ash landed on top of a glacier. The ash reacted with the acidic water and turned into a salty mineral called jarosite, forming deposits that mimicked the shapes of the glacier underneath it, like plaster in a mold. Later on, some sort of erosive process removed the upper layers of ash, revealing the glacier-like salt layers.
Ancient, fossilized glaciers. A strange world of fire and ice.