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Is Mars Dead. The Volcanoes will Tell



Mars has been the at the center of the attention spotlight of late, with the Mars rovers traversing its surface, NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor, and the European Space Agency's Mars Express missions operating from orbit. A team of scientists have collaborated to determine that, while at the moment Mars is a lifeless hunk of rock, the future may not be the same.

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New research focusing on the Tharsis Montes volcanoes--Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons--suggests that the volcanoes may not be dead, but only dormant. Volcanic eruptions have the potential to spew copious amounts of greenhouse gasses in to the atmosphere. For a planet that would at once both freeze and boil liquid water due to its atmosphere, a greenhouse would definitely be a step forwards. The debate thus switches to whether there is anything beneath the volcanoes to force an eruption. "On Earth, the Hawaiian islands were built from volcanoes that erupted as the Earth's crust slid over a hot spot -- a plume of rising magma," said Dr. Jacob Bleacher of Arizona State University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Our research raises the possibility that the opposite happens on Mars--a plume might move beneath stationary crust." At the moment, the three volcanoes appear relatively dead. However a lack of the large impact craters that spatter the rest of the Martian surface suggest that the volcanoes have erupted recently, i.e., the matter expelled from an eruption has covered over any impact craters within the vicinity. The scientists have spent a lot of time comparing the Tharsis Montes region with the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiian Islands were created as a result of the Pacific crustal plate sliding over a plume, or a hot spot. As the plate slid over the hot spot, a volcano was punched up through the crust. Subsequently, the hot spot has caused a chain of volcanic islands that now make up the Hawaiian Islands to form in line with the tectonic plates movement over the hotspot. "We thought we could take what we learned about lava flow features on Hawaiian volcanoes and apply it to Martian volcanoes to reveal their history," said Bleacher. "The problem was that until recently, there were no photos with sufficient detail over large surface areas to reveal these features on Martian volcanoes. We finally have pictures with enough detail..." The reverse is said to be one of the explanations for the creation of the Tharsis Montes volcanoes. Instead of a crustal plate moving across a hot spot, the stationary plate underneath the volcanoes could have encountered a plume moving underneath it, creating the volcanoes as it moved north east. A second theory is that, like a cloud of smoke hitting a roof and then spreading out, the magma could have reached the plate and spread out. This would explain why the northernmost volcano--Ascraeus Mons--looks as if it is the most recent to erupt. The plume could have remained under Arsia--the earliest to erupt--and spread northward toward Ascraeus. However, according to bleacher, "Our evidence doesn't favor either scenario, but one way to explain the trends we see is for a plume to move under the stationary Martian crust." As for their dormancy, a lack of discovery has suggested that they are not dead. A volcano will become dead as it moves further and further away from the hotspot. As it does so, leaving the magma to cool, it releases trapped gas. Short explosive eruptions are then caused, leaving earlier flows to become covered with piles of cinders, known as cinder cones. The team focusing their attention on Mars found none of these cones n any of the Tharsis Montes volcanoes, suggesting that they have yet to be removed from the hotspot. All of this, though is theoretically still not enough to bring any substantial change to the Martian surface. A volcanic eruption would have to be massive to spew enough material in to the air to exact any sort of change to the atmosphere. Whether that can happen, is simply a matter of waiting and seeing. Joshua Hill, a Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm.


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Guest Column Joshua Hill -- Bio and Archives

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