Ucla Scientist Discovers Plate Tectonics On Mars

[JMJones0424]

UCLA Press release by Stuart Wolpert August 09, 2012

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"Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics. It gives us a glimpse of how the early Earth may have looked and may help us understand how plate tectonics began on Earth," said An Yin, a UCLA professor of Earth and space sciences and the sole author of the new research.

 

Yin made the discovery during his analysis of satellite images from a NASA spacecraft known as THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) and from the HIRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. He analyzed about 100 satellite images — approximately a dozen were revealing of plate tectonics.

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The surface of Mars contains the longest and deepest system of canyons in our solar system, known as Valles Marineris (Latin for Mariner Valleys and named for the Mariner 9 Mars orbiter of 1971–72, which discovered it). It is nearly 2,500 miles long — about nine times longer than the Earth's Grand Canyon. Scientists have wondered for four decades how it formed. Was it a big crack in Mars' shell that opened up?

 

"In the beginning, I did not expect plate tectonics, but the more I studied it, the more I realized Mars is so different from what other scientists anticipated," Yin said. "I saw that the idea that it is just a big crack that opened up is incorrect. It is really a plate boundary, with horizontal motion. That is kind of shocking, but the evidence is quite clear.

 

"The shell is broken and is moving horizontally over a long distance. It is very similar to the Earth's Dead Sea fault system, which has also opened up and is moving horizontally."

 

The two plates divided by Mars' Valles Marineris have moved approximately 93 miles horizontally relative to each other, Yin said. California's San Andreas Fault, which is over the intersection of two plates, has moved about twice as much — but the Earth is about twice the size of Mars, so Yin said they are comparable.

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To be honest, I never thought that plate tectonics would be possible on Mars. I thought that we had already confirmed that Mars was geologically dead, but this appears to not be the case.

[Moontanman]

I think it's more probable that plate tectonics is winding down on Mars not starting up.

[CraigD]

To be honest, I never thought that plate tectonics would be possible on Mars. I thought that we had already confirmed that Mars was geologically dead, but this appears to not be the case.

I had the same impression, but after a little reading, find and that there is a lot of contradictory conclusions in encyclopedic and science literature. For example, the wikipedia article Mars states

Mars is also nearly, or perhaps totally, geologically dead; the end of volcanic activity has apparently stopped the recycling of chemicals and minerals between the surface and interior of the planet

citing an apparently respected 1997 textbook, while a link from that article to Volcanism on Mars states

Martian volcanic features range in age from Noachian (>3.7 billion years) to late Amazonian (< 500 million years), indicating that the planet has been volcanically active throughout its history and probably still is so today.

citing a 1973 journal article, and further mentioned and supported down-article by 2004 analysis of orbiter images of features believed to be lava flows less than 2,000,000 years old.

 

If this analysis is accurate, it seems unlikely that Martian volcanic activity has stopped, but rather that it is much “slower”, with less frequent eruptions, than on Earth.

 

Unless by the lucky event of an eruption right now, I don’t know if the question can be conclusively answered without much better unmanned, or perhaps manned, landings. Current seismic surveying techniques can accurately image underground magma chambers, but are beyond the capability of even the most recent landers.

 

Things to do on Mars ... :)

 

I think it's more probable that plate tectonics is winding down on Mars not starting up.

I’ve not considered it in detail, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that Mars and Earth formed from compositionally similar protoplanatary disks material, so both have about equal fractions of long-half-life, heat-producing radioactive elements (see this list), so neither will cool so much that they have no melted rock in the mantles, and possibly thrusting through their crusts, within the next 10,000,000,000 years or more. So while both Earth and Mars are tectonically winding down, neither will wind down to a “geologically dead” stop anytime soon.

[Moontanman]

I’ve not considered it in detail, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that Mars and Earth formed from compositionally similar protoplanatary disks material, so both have about equal fractions of long-half-life, heat-producing radioactive elements (see this list), so neither will cool so much that they have no melted rock in the mantles, and possibly thrusting through their crusts, within the next 10,000,000,000 years or more. So while both Earth and Mars are tectonically winding down, neither will wind down to a “geologically dead” stop anytime soon.

 

 

Mars is not thought to have a extensive molten mantle like the earth not because it contains different elements but because it is much smaller and never had the heat content the earth did and a smaller planet cools faster, cube square law. also the Earth is thought to be at the small end of the scale for plate tectonics due to it's ocean. with out the the oceans plate tectonics would stop. The op indicates mars is at an earlier stage of plate tectonics as well, not that is is at the same or similar stages of plate tectonics.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics

 

The appearance of plate tectonics on terrestrial planets is related to planetary mass, with more massive planets than Earth expected to exhibit plate tectonics. Earth may be a borderline case, owing its tectonic activity to abundant water [64] (Silica and water form a deep eutectic.)

 

 

Venus shows no evidence of active plate tectonics. There is debatable evidence of active tectonics in the planet's distant past; however, events taking place since then (such as the plausible and generally accepted hypothesis that the Venusian lithosphere has thickened greatly over the course of several hundred million years) has made constraining the course of its geologic record difficult. However, the numerous well-preserved impact craters have been utilized as a dating method to approximately date the Venusian surface (since there are thus far no known samples of Venusian rock to be dated by more reliable methods). Dates derived are dominantly in the range 500 to 750 million years ago, although ages of up to 1,200 million years ago have been calculated. This research has led to the fairly well accepted hypothesis that Venus has undergone an essentially complete volcanic resurfacing at least once in its distant past, with the last event taking place approximately within the range of estimated surface ages. While the mechanism of such an impressive thermal event remains a debated issue in Venusian geosciences, some scientists are advocates of processes involving plate motion to some extent.

One explanation for Venus' lack of plate tectonics is that on Venus temperatures are too high for significant water to be present.[65].[66] The Earth's crust is soaked with water, and water plays an important role in the development of shear zones. Plate tectonics requires weak surfaces in the crust along which crustal slices can move, and it may well be that such weakening never took place on Venus because of the absence of water. However, some researchers remain convinced that plate tectonics is or was once active on this planet.

 

 

 

Mars is considerably smaller than Earth and Venus, and there is evidence for ice on its surface and in its crust.

In the 1990s, it was proposed that Martian Crustal Dichotomy was created by plate tectonic processes.[67] Scientists today disagree, and believe that it was created either by upwelling within the Martian mantle that thickened the crust of the Southern Highlands and formed Tharsis[68] or by a giant impact that excavated the Northern Lowlands.[69]

Valles Marineris is a tectonic boundary.[70]

Observations made of the magnetic field of Mars by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in 1999 showed patterns of magnetic striping discovered on this planet. Some scientists interpreted these as requiring plate tectonic processes, such as seafloor spreading.[71] However, their data fail a "magnetic reversal test", which is used to see if they were formed by flipping polarities of a global magnetic field.[72]