Found on Mars a volcanic area as large as Europe that can erupt

Until a few weeks ago, Mars was a dead planet.

The last volcanic eruptions took place there billions of years ago and the vast majority of experts thought that since then the bowels of the planet have been practically immobile.

But today a groundbreaking study is published that completely changes this idea.

The work analyzes data from various orbital probes and also the dozens of marsquakes captured by Insight, the NASA spacecraft perched near the equator of Mars and which was the first to record seismic movements on the red planet.

The conclusions of the study are compelling: the subsoil of Elysium Planitia, one of the largest plains on Mars, harbors an area with current volcanic activity that has a diameter of about 4,000 kilometers, similar to that of all of Western Europe.

The study highlights that Mars becomes the third planet in the inner solar system with known active volcanism, along with Earth and Venus.

Those responsible for the work are Adrien Broquet and Jeff Andrews-Hanna, scientists at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona (USA).

Both have analyzed a different data set taken by different space probes that have studied the red planet for decades, such as the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Reconnoissance Orbiter, both from NASA.

These and other missions have made it possible to compose detailed topographic maps, as well as to study the changes in the force of gravity exerted by the planet, which depends on the composition of both the surface and the interior layers.

Adding up the recent Insight tests, both researchers conclude that the most plausible explanation is the existence of a huge "mantle plume" in this part of the planet, that is, a large rock conduit that connects the planet's inner mantle with the crust. external.

The plume is between 100 and 300 degrees hotter than the rest of the planet, so despite being a solid it slowly flows upward.

The head of this plume is thought to be between 25 kilometers and 200 kilometers deep.

If it got to about 10 kilometers, the thrust could heat the crust until it melted, causing an eruption of lava.

The high seismic activity captured by the NASA spacecraft indicates that this area "is active" and that there may already be lava deposits in the subsoil, according to the authors of the study, published in

.

Adrien Broquet explains: “In another work by our group we have found the most recent case of volcanism in the history of Mars;

a small ash deposit about 20 kilometers in diameter right in the center of the mantle plume.

Its age is 50,000 years, which means yesterday in geological terms.

All of this tells us that this region is currently active.”

In 1990, a team of scientists simulated a mantle plume using a box filled with syrup of different densities.

One of the shapes created looks like what must be happening in the crust of Mars right now, with the rounded head of the feather like a mushroom pushing its way out of the crust of Mars.

Reproduction of a mantle feather.

The upper dark part would be the bark, against which the head of the feather pushes. RW Grifiths

The pressure can form magma deposits in the crust and cause eruptions on geologic time scales, explains Jeff Andrews-Hanna, co-author of the paper.

“Our finding implies that there could be an eruption on Mars;

It could be today or a million years or so, which is a very short time on these scales.

This is undoubtedly the most interesting region on Mars today, ”he highlights.

The plume's pressure on the crust of Mars has caused the entire region to have a domed shape that rises from the surrounding terrain by one to two kilometers.

It has also caused a huge network of cracks and fault lines known as the Cerberus Trench;

the longest on the entire planet, with about 1,300 kilometers long.

This volcanism on Mars is both similar and different from that on Earth.

The same process of mantle plumes and hot spots happens in places like Hawaii or the Canary Islands.

Since there are tectonic plates on Earth that move like huge rafts over the mantle, the plumes cause eruptions that create island chains.

There is no plate tectonics on Mars, so possible eruptions are concentrated at a single point.

The dimensions of the new volcanic zone on Mars are staggering.

The researchers have calculated the amount of liquid lava the plume could expel to the surface by heating the crust.

The estimate is an eruption similar to the one that created the Columbia River plateau (USA) by the Yellowstone hot spot, which covered an area similar to half of Spain.

The mantle plume discovered on Mars is much larger than any that has existed on Earth, although its emergence and eruption times are much longer because Mars is cooler and has less gravity, being smaller than Earth.

Broquet compares this revelation to what already happened in the 70s, when the seismic experiments of the Apollo spacecraft, including the explosion of bombs, revealed that the Moon was not a dead, cold and inert satellite, but rather harbors a rock core. cast.

“Most also see Mars as a small, cold, dead world, but the discovery of this large mantle plume is a paradigm shift.

No model had predicted the existence of active volcanism on Mars, so we are going to have to rewrite the geological history of the planet to explain how it could have formed”, he adds.

The new data implies that Insight is perched on the new volcanic plume, though this may not change her luck much.

The ship is at the western end of the active zone, far from its center, and the lava would flow to the east, so it is unlikely that an eruption could carry it away.

“Our plans are not going to change much,” explains Simon Stahler, a geophysicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology involved in the Insight mission.

“The probe is about to run out of power due to accumulated dirt on the solar panels.

What we can do until the batteries die is reevaluate how we measure earthquakes to account for the existence of this plume.

Seismic waves travel faster when the ground is cold.

Until now we assumed that the temperature was uniform,

but now we know that there is a large warmer area”, adds Stahler.

On Earth, volcanism is one of the biggest drivers of climate change and natural disasters.

The extinction of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago is thought to have been caused in part by a massive eruption that lasted almost a million years, cooling the Earth.

This, Stahler says, would be "impossible" on Mars, because volcanism there is too slow.

"In any case, it is important to discover that the planet is not dead," he points out.

says Stahler, it would be "impossible" on Mars, because volcanism there is too slow.

"In any case, it is important to discover that the planet is not dead," he points out.

says Stahler, it would be "impossible" on Mars, because volcanism there is too slow.

"In any case, it is important to discover that the planet is not dead," he points out.

Planetary geologist Antonio Molina, from the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid, appreciates the number of different tests that this study handles.

"Separately they could mean different things, but together they suggest that active volcanism is the best possible explanation," he points out.

In any case, he warns, more tests will be necessary, such as analyzing volcanism in other parts of the planet.

The work has two last major implications for future robotic and human exploration of Mars.

It is thought that if there is life on the planet it must be in the form of microbes sheltering below the surface to escape the high radiation.

The fact that there is volcanism and higher temperatures can make this a more hospitable area for these organisms and, therefore, a good place to send future robotic missions, Molina reasons.

It is likely that this new information will also influence the design of future manned missions to the red planet.

The Plain of Elysium is currently the only site where a functional geothermal base could be created to provide heat and power for astronauts.

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