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Mars once harbored seas and oceans, and possibly life as well. But our neighboring world has long since dried up and its atmosphere has been wiped out, while most of the activity beneath its surface has long since ceased. It is a dead planet.
Or is it?
Previous research has hinted at volcanic eruptions on Mars 2.5 million years ago. But a new document suggests that an eruption occurred as recently as 53,000 years ago in a region called Cerberus Fossae, which is said to be the youngest known volcanic eruption on Mars. This brings home the prospect that beneath its rusted surface pockmarked by gigantic volcanoes that have gone silent, some volcanism still erupts to the surface at rare intervals.
“If this deposit is of volcanic origin, the Cerberus Fossae region may not be extinct and Mars may still be volcanically active today,” scientists from the University of Arizona and the Smithsonian Institution write in their article, which was published online. prior to peer review and was featured in Icarus magazine.
The site of the potential eruption, seen in images from Martian orbit, is near a large volcano called Elysium Mons. It is located about 1,000 miles east of NASA’s stationary InSight lander, which landed on Mars in 2018 to study it. tectonic activity on the red planet. Appearing as a crack on the surface, the feature looks like a recent eruption of fissures, where underground volcanic activity caused superheated volcanic ash and dust to burst across the surface. It is similar to the deposits caused by pyroclastic eruptions that scientists have identified on the Moon, Mercury, and Earth.
Originating from magma deep beneath the surface, the eruption would have reached a height of several miles before falling back to the ground. The amount of material is estimated 100 times less than the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, said Steven Anderson, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley, who was not involved in the paper.
It is the presence of darker material here, along with its symmetrical appearance around the crack, that suggests an eruption. Known as a fault escarpment, this type of feature is “very common in Hawaii” because magma near volcanoes causes the surface to expand and crack, says Robert Craddock of the Smithsonian Institution, co-author of the paper.
By counting the number of visible craters around the element and in the deposit itself, which is about six miles wide, the team dates the potential eruption from 53,000 to 210,000 years ago. This would be by far the youngest known volcanic eruption on Mars.
“I think it’s pretty convincing,” said Dr. Anderson.
If it stands up to scrutiny, the discovery would have big implications for Mars. In geological terms, 53,000 years is a blink of an eye, suggesting Mars may still be volcanically active now. It could also have major implications for the search for life on Mars.
Such volcanic activity could melt underground ice, providing a potential habitable environment for living things.
“To have life, you need energy, carbon, water and nutrients,” said Dr. Anderson. “And a volcanic system provides all of these.”
NASA’s InSight lander may already have recorded activity related to this site. Using a seismometer, he measured hundreds of “marzematids” or vibrations on the Martian surface. But only two of these have been located – and both were from Cerberus Fossae.
“It is certainly plausible that tectonic activity is related to volcanic activity,” said Suzanne Smrekar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is the deputy principal investigator of the InSight mission.
It may be possible that InSight will look for other similar activities soon.
“It’s an exciting document,” said Dr. Smrekar. “Understanding the current activity on Mars is truly a mystery and the key to investigating its evolution and habitability.”
However, questions still remain. Lu Pan, a planetary scientist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, isn’t so sure about the team’s dating method.
“If you want to date a very recent surface, rely on the population of small impact craters,” said Dr Pan. “And we have yet to build this large database of small impact craters.”
Even in a conservative scenario, however, David Horvath of the University of Arizona, the lead author of the article, said the eruption would have occurred only a million years ago. This alone would breathe new life into our understanding of Mars.
“It definitely leaves open the possibility that, deep in the surface, it may be active today,” he said.
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