Weird ring-mounds in one of Mars’ largest craters
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 16, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labels these strange features “ring-mound landforms,” a term that has been used to describe [pdf] only vaguely similar features previously found in the Athabasca flood lava plain almost on the other side of Mars. That paper suggested that those ring mounds formed on the “thin, brittle crust of an active fluid flow” created by an explosive event. Since Athabasca is considered Mars’s most recent major flood lava event, the fluid was likely lava, which on Mars flows more quickly and thinly in the lower gravity.
Thus, in Athabasca the ring-mounds formed when a pimple of molten lava from below popped the surface.
But what about the ring mounds in the picture to the right?
The white dot on the overview map marks the location, inside 285-mile-wide Schiaparelli Crater, one of Mars’ larger cratersand also one of the oldest, its rim and interior much changed with many layers formed by Mars’s endless climatic and geological cycles, some caused by volcanic events and others by the repeated swings of the planet’s rotational tilt.
It would seem then that these ring mounds were formed shortly after impact, when much of the crater’s floor was still filled with impact melt, covered by its own thin crust. As that melt cooled, it likely caused its own convection bubbles to burst through that crust, producing these ring mounds.
Or not. Note how this patch of ring mounds is found in what looks like a secondary smaller impact crater inside Schiaparelli. Maybe the ring mounds were caused not by the main impact but by this secondary one.
Then again, the patch is itself somewhat localized. If the mounds were caused by bubbling impact melt lava from below, why only at this spot?
The mysteries of Martian geology continue to tantalize.
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.
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3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 16, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labels these strange features “ring-mound landforms,” a term that has been used to describe [pdf] only vaguely similar features previously found in the Athabasca flood lava plain almost on the other side of Mars. That paper suggested that those ring mounds formed on the “thin, brittle crust of an active fluid flow” created by an explosive event. Since Athabasca is considered Mars’s most recent major flood lava event, the fluid was likely lava, which on Mars flows more quickly and thinly in the lower gravity.
Thus, in Athabasca the ring-mounds formed when a pimple of molten lava from below popped the surface.
But what about the ring mounds in the picture to the right?
The white dot on the overview map marks the location, inside 285-mile-wide Schiaparelli Crater, one of Mars’ larger cratersand also one of the oldest, its rim and interior much changed with many layers formed by Mars’s endless climatic and geological cycles, some caused by volcanic events and others by the repeated swings of the planet’s rotational tilt.
It would seem then that these ring mounds were formed shortly after impact, when much of the crater’s floor was still filled with impact melt, covered by its own thin crust. As that melt cooled, it likely caused its own convection bubbles to burst through that crust, producing these ring mounds.
Or not. Note how this patch of ring mounds is found in what looks like a secondary smaller impact crater inside Schiaparelli. Maybe the ring mounds were caused not by the main impact but by this secondary one.
Then again, the patch is itself somewhat localized. If the mounds were caused by bubbling impact melt lava from below, why only at this spot?
The mysteries of Martian geology continue to tantalize.
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.
Now it looks like a plasma discharge field, that was washed over by later tsunami that desiccated rapidly after exposure to space.