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More evidence that Mars is volcanically active right now. Today. - SYFY WIRE

More evidence that Mars is volcanically active right now. Today. - SYFY WIRE

More evidence that Mars is volcanically active right now. Today. - SYFY WIRE
May 10, 2021 1 min, 30 secs

The images targeted an area called Elysium Planitia (literally the Plains of Heaven), specifically a region called Cerberus Fossae that's loaded with parallel cracks in the Martian crust.

These fissures in the crust are called fossae, and are due to tectonic extension, where the ground is pulled apart from pressure under the surface.

The surface of Mars is littered with volcanic material globally, but volcanism peaked on the planet probably 2–3 billion years ago.

Left: The Elyisum Planitia area where Mars InSight landed, which contains a volcano and lots of fissures in the surface.

Right: The fissure in question, with dark material spread out around it, possibly from very recent pyroclastic flows.

There are lobes or wings of dark material extending for many kilometers on either side of the fissure along about half its length.

Sand dunes ripple across the floor of a graben in Cerberus Fossae on Mars in this enhanced color image (Mars is dark grey and ochre, not blue).

The total amount of dark material there is about 20 million cubic meters, or a cube roughly 270 meters on a side, but it's spread out over a lot of area, and is probably up to a few dozen centimeters thick near the fissure (this was determined by looking at craters from impacts that happened after the material was deposited; they reveal how deep the material is).

Cerberus Fossae is a set of largely parallel cracks in the surface of Mars near the Equator.

NASA has a lander called InSight on the other side of Elysium Planitia, about 1700 km to the southwest of this area.

InSight has a seismograph, and it has detected quite a few marsquakes, including two fairly big ones (about magnitude 3) in Mach 2021 coming from the direction of Cerberus Fossae.

Cerberus Fossae might be a good place to eventually look

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