Skip to main content

Mars Had its Own Version of Plate Tectonics

Plate tectonics is not something most people would associate with Mars. In fact, the planet’s dead core is one of the primary reasons for its famous lack of a magnetic field. And since active planetary cores are one of the primary driving factors of plate tectonics, it seems obvious why that general conception holds. However, Mars has some features that we think of as corresponding with plate tectonics – volcanoes. A new paper from researchers at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) looks at how different types of plate tectonics could have formed different types of volcanoes on the surface of Mars.

Typically, when you think of volcanoes on Mars, you think of massive shield volcanoes like Olympus Mons, similar to those seen in some locations on Earth, such as Hawai’i. These form when repeated eruptions deposit layers of lava for millions of years. Those eruptions aren’t impacted by how any underlying plates move underneath them. But they do create a different underlying landscape than elsewhere on the planet.

One of the main differences is that the volcanoes have a high silica concentration. Most of the rest of the Red Planet has relatively low silica concentration and consists primarily of basalt. However, they have distinctly more elevated levels of silica, and Dr. Joseph Michalski and his colleagues at HKU think they know why.

PBS has a geological history of Mars.
Credit – PBS Eons YouTube Channel

Back in the Archean age, 3 billion years ago, on Earth, geologists have theorized that a type of plate tectonics known as “vertical tectonics” forced the planet’s crust to collapse into the planet’s mantle. There, it was reformed, injected with a high concentration of silica, and then spewed back onto the surface due to erupting volcanoes.

That would conveniently explain why the silica levels of volcanoes on Mars are higher than on the rest of the planet. To back up their findings, the paper describes signs of numerous other volcano types, such as stratovolcanoes and lava domes, that also contain high silica concentrations and could result from this type of theorized tectonics.

On Earth, other active geological processes have worn down the rock that could have been formed by these processes billions of years ago. But there isn’t nearly as much geological activity on Mars, so it provides a clearer picture of the resulting geology from these processes. 

SciShow Space Discusses the possibility that Mars still has active volcanoes.
Credit – SciShow Space YouTube Channel

This body of work contributes to our overall understanding of the geology of Mars, and the discovery of so many additional volcanoes is sure to interest areologists for years to come. But for now, this new theory of Mars’ geological history is another step in our understanding of the Red Planet.

Learn More:
UHK – Diverse Ancient Volcanoes on Mars Discovered by HKU Planetary Scientist May Hold Clues to Pre-plate Tectonic Activity on Earth
Michalski et al. – Diverse volcanism and crustal recycling on early Mars
UT – Mars is Surprisingly Volcanically Active
UT – Scientists Find Clues of Plate Tectonics on Mars

Lead Image:
Volcanoes on Mars

The post Mars Had its Own Version of Plate Tectonics appeared first on Universe Today.



from Universe Today https://ift.tt/CtTjhGv
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Researchers Match Up 12 Meteorites with the Near-Earth Asteroids They Came From

Every day meteoroids blast through our planet’s atmosphere to hit the ground as meteorites. A team of researchers in Italy traced twelve of them to progenitor asteroids that orbit in near-Earth space. Scientists treasure meteorites because they reveal information about their parent bodies. In an arXiv paper, two Italian researchers—Albino Carbognani and Marco Fenucci—analyze the characteristics of the parent bodies of 20 selected meteorites. They were able to track all but eight back to their parent asteroids. Based on their work, the pair says at least a quarter of meteorites come from collisions that happened in near-Earth space and not in the Main Belt. Meteorites from Near-Earth Asteroids: How They Got Here Many meteorites are chondritic, similar to asteroids in the Main Belt (or came from it). In their paper, the authors point out that progenitor meteoroids (including many that fall to Earth and become meteorites) formed millions of years ago following collisions between main-...
Post a Comment
Read more

JWST Takes a Detailed Look at Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

Nature doesn’t conform to our ideas of neatly-contained categories. Many things in nature blur the lines we try to draw around them. That’s true of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. The JWST took a closer look at Ganymede, the moon that’s kind of like a planet, to understand its surface better. Ganymede is basically a planet, except it doesn’t orbit the Sun. If it did orbit the Sun instead of Jupiter, it would be indistinguishable from a planet. It has a differentiated internal structure with a molten core that produces a magnetic field. It has a silicon mantle much like Earth’s, and has a complex icy crust with a deep ocean submerged beneath it. It has an atmosphere, though it’s thin. It’s also larger than Mercury, and almost as large as Mars. According to the authors of a new study, it’s an archetype of a water world. But even with all this knowledge of the huge moon, there are details yet to be revealed. This is especially true of its complex surface...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Blew Up the Local Bubble?

In our neighborhood of the Milky Way, we see a region surrounding the solar system that is far less dense than average. But that space, that cavity, is a very irregular, elongated shape. What little material is left inside of this cavity is insanely hot, as it has a temperature of around a million Kelvin. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/KvVDeiC via IFTTT
Post a Comment
Read more