Mars "Crater" Was Actually Super-Volcano, Shocking Scientists: May Be Reason Mars Is Barren, Red
The supervolcano on Mars may be the reason the planet scientists explore today is barren and red.
Scientists at the Planetary Science Institute and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center announced that a vast basin on Mars called Eden Patera is not a crater but a volcano.
It's not the first eruption on Mars; newer shield volcanoes exploded during the Hesperian time period. However, the ancient supervolcanoes exploded in a different way altogether.
When the "supervolcano" erupted, the result was a depression on Mars' surface called a "caldera", which looks like a crater.
"This highly explosive type of eruption is a game-changer, spewing many times more ash and other material than typical, younger Martian volcanoes," Goddard's Jacob Bleacher said in a statement. "During these types of eruptions on Earth, the debris may spread so far through the atmosphere and remain so long that it alters the global temperature for years."
The supervolcano was like a bottle of soda being shaken and released across the Marian landcape. Tons of magma and gas exploded from the surface of the volcano very quickly.
Becaue the material explodes away so fast, the depression left behind collapses, making it look less like a volcano. The phenomena has been observed on Earth in places like Yellowstone National Park in the US and Lake Toba in Indonesia.
The new volcano may explain why and how Mars evolved.
Eden Patera is located in the Arabia Terra region of Mars, which is an area full of impact craters. Scientists noticed that the "crater" was missing its rim and the ejecta - melted rock that splashes out when an object hits a planet, and realized that it wasn't from a meteorite something striking into Mars hard-- it was from something exploding out of the Red Planet. Upon further investigation, many other features showed volcanimsm.
The full study, "Supervolcanoes within an ancient volcanic province in Arabia Terra, Mars", has just been published in Nature. ®