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Mars was once home to seas and oceans, and perhaps even life. But our neighboring world has long since dried up and its atmosphere has been washed away, while most of the activity beneath its surface has long since ceased. It’s a dead planet.
Where is it?
Previous research has hinted at volcanic eruptions on Mars 2.5 million years ago. But a new article suggests that an eruption happened 53,000 years ago in an area called Cerberus Fossae, believed to be the youngest known volcanic eruption on Mars. This leads to the prospect that beneath its rusty surface dotted with 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”, write scientists from the University of Arizona and the Smithsonian Institution, in their article – which was posted online prior to peer review. and has been submitted to the journal Icarus.
The site of the potential eruption, seen in the Martian orbit images, is near a large volcano called Elysium Mons. It is about 1,000 miles east of NASA’s InSight hovering lander, which landed on Mars in 2018 to study tectonic activity on the Red Planet. Appearing as a fissure on the surface, the feature looks like a recent fissure eruption, where underground volcanic activity caused superheated volcanic ash and dust to erupt on the surface. It is similar to the deposits caused by pyroclastic eruptions that scientists have spotted on the Moon, Mercury, and Earth.
Coming from magma deep below the surface, the eruption would have reached a height of several kilometers before falling to the ground. The amount of material is estimated to be 100 times less than the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980, said Steven Anderson, professor of earth sciences at the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley, who was not involved. in the article.
It’s the presence of darker material here, coupled with its symmetrical appearance around the crack, that hints at an eruption. Known as the fault scarf, 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 article.
By counting the number of craters visible around the element and in the deposit itself, which is about six miles in diameter, the team dates the potential eruption to be 53,000 to 210,000 years old. It would be by far the most recent known volcanic eruption on Mars.
“I think it’s pretty convincing,” Dr Anderson said.
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 that Mars may still be volcanically active now. It could also have big implications for the search for life on Mars.
Such volcanic activity could melt subsurface 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 that.”
NASA’s InSight lander may have already recorded activity related to this site. Using a seismometer, he measured hundreds of “marsquakes” or vibrations in the Martian surface. But only two of them were located – and both were from Cerberus Fossae.
“It is certainly plausible that tectonic activity is linked 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 for InSight to seek further such activities soon.
“This is a fascinating article,” said Dr Smrekar. “Understanding the current activity on Mars is indeed a mystery and a key to investigating its evolution and habitability.”
Questions remain, however. Lu Pan, a planetary scientist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, is not so sure about the team’s dating method.
“If you want to date a surface very recent, you are relying on the population of small impact craters,” said Dr Pan. “And we haven’t built this big database of small impact craters yet.”
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. That alone would breathe new life into our understanding of Mars.
“It definitely leaves open the possibility that deep down on the surface he’s active today,” he said.
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