The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

The 'InSight' probe detects 174 earthquakes on Mars in a year

2020-02-24T17:09:17.181Z


The researchers believe that somewhere on the planet there may be sources of radiation that generate volcanism and are behind seismic movements


Mars has seismic activity, although its origin is not the same as that of earthquakes and its intensity is much lower. The InSight probe, which landed in a crater of the Elysian plain of the red planet on November 26, 2018, has recorded the tremors of that world for about a year. In that period, as published in the journal Nature Geoscience , 174 shocks were recorded, 20 of which reached a magnitude of 3 or 4.

As explained by Suzanne Smrekar, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and number two of the InSight mission, if we were on the surface of Mars at the time of one of these earthquakes, it is unlikely that we would feel anything. “These same earthquakes on Earth are sometimes more superficial, they can occur less than five kilometers deep, but those we have detected on Mars are 50”, I have exemplified.

The study of Martian seismicity is a way to learn about the history of the planet and also to study its interior through the waves that arrive from the epicenter to the InSight sensors. "We are beginning to better delineate the structure of the crust, but we hope to see larger earthquakes that will serve as probes to introduce us deeper into the planet," said Smrekar.

The magnitude of the Martian earthquakes is not enough for a human to feel if he were there

The Martian earthquakes are different from the earthquakes. "On Earth, tectonics is dominated by plate tectonics, it is almost synonymous," says Philippe Lognonné, a researcher at the University of Paris Diderot and collaborator on the project. “Here, tectonics is a deformation of the cortex. There is a fault that is moving and when the crust breaks a movement occurs. Plates are the dominant force, but on other planets, especially on Mars, there are no tectonic plates and it is other processes that cause failures, ”he continues. In the case of that planet, volcanism has been detected in at least one place during the last 10 million years, "so it is possible that magma exists at a certain depth." This magma cools and the contraction of the chamber in which it is located causes a deformation of the lithosphere that could be causing the seismic movements.

"It is surprising that there is recent volcanism on Mars," says Bruce Banerdt, leader of the InSight mission. “If you took a simple model of Mars, you wouldn't expect it to be hot enough inside to contain magma. There is no evidence that there are volcanic emissions, as happens under Hawaii, in the depths of Mars, but they may be there, ”continues Banerdt. Perhaps, the researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory speculates, "there are areas with more radioactive material, uranium, thorium, potassium, which causes localized heating and allows the existence of volcanic bags."

In the past, Mars had an intense volcanic activity that allowed the appearance of the largest volcanoes in the solar system. There is Mount Olympus, which with more than 20 kilometers of altitude exceeds the elevation of Everest by more than double. However, given its smaller size, Mars cooled much faster than Earth and its geological activity was disappearing, although as suggested by the results of InSight , not quite.

The work of this probe will continue for at least another year. In that period, it will continue to collect information with two instruments with unprecedented capabilities and sensitivity. On the one hand, a seismometer capable of detecting movements of one hundred thousand millionth of a meter that, in addition to earthquakes, can feel the impact of a meteorite kilometers away. The second instrument is a firing pin that has drilled the Martian soil to place temperature sensors with which to check how much geological life is left on Mars. Other detectors have also found that at the landing site the magnetic field strength is ten times higher than calculated from the data collected by the orbital probes. In a decade that many pose as the preparation for the first human arrival on the planet most similar to Earth, works such as InSight are essential to know the world we will reach.

You can write to daniel@esmateria.com or follow MATERIA on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or subscribe here to our Newsletter.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-02-24

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.