Weird Martian crater?
Time for another cool image! The image on the left, cropped to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on May 31, 2018, and shows a very strange layered mesa sitting in what looks like a crater or collapse feature. If you click on the image you can see the entire picture.
The location of this image is out in the middle of the vast northern plains of Mars. This region has few pronounced features, and generally sits at a lower elevation to the rest of Mars. It is suspected by some scientists that an intermittent ocean was once here, and that we are looking at the floor of a now dry sea.
This image was part of the July image release from MRO, and thus included no caption. They simply refer to it as a layered feature. It sits about a half mile (about 800 meters) to the west of a rough and indistinct cliff that drops down into an area of rougher terrain. This suggests that if this was formed by an impact, it cut down into that lower rougher layer, and since the impact there has been some upwelling from below creating the layered mesa.
I would not take my hypothesis very seriously, however. This feature could have nothing to do with an impact. It might also have been a mesa that now sits in a collapsed sinkhole. Or not. I could come up with many theories, all of which are likely wrong. What I do see here is something that geologically is very strange and baffling.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Time for another cool image! The image on the left, cropped to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on May 31, 2018, and shows a very strange layered mesa sitting in what looks like a crater or collapse feature. If you click on the image you can see the entire picture.
The location of this image is out in the middle of the vast northern plains of Mars. This region has few pronounced features, and generally sits at a lower elevation to the rest of Mars. It is suspected by some scientists that an intermittent ocean was once here, and that we are looking at the floor of a now dry sea.
This image was part of the July image release from MRO, and thus included no caption. They simply refer to it as a layered feature. It sits about a half mile (about 800 meters) to the west of a rough and indistinct cliff that drops down into an area of rougher terrain. This suggests that if this was formed by an impact, it cut down into that lower rougher layer, and since the impact there has been some upwelling from below creating the layered mesa.
I would not take my hypothesis very seriously, however. This feature could have nothing to do with an impact. It might also have been a mesa that now sits in a collapsed sinkhole. Or not. I could come up with many theories, all of which are likely wrong. What I do see here is something that geologically is very strange and baffling.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
I would say an impact crater formed in a shallow sea filled in by silt.
I recognize this from when I was 17. Showed up just before a date where I felt even more awkward.