2023-10-23 06:00:09
An earthquake of record magnitude recently shook Mars, challenging our previous understanding of Martian seismology. Contrary to what was believed, this earthquake was not caused by an asteroid impact (An asteroid is a celestial object whose dimensions vary by a few dozen…), but by internal tectonic forces.
Artistic concept of the deployment of NASA’s (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) InSight landing module instruments onto the surface. …) Of March.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
On May 4, 2022, NASA’s InSight instrument, now inactive, recorded a magnitude 4.7 earthquake. The latter lasted six hours, the longest and most powerful earthquake ever recorded on another planet. Unlike Earth, where tectonic plate movements frequently cause earthquakes, Mars is not expected to be as seismically active. Indeed, the surface of Mars is not fragmented in the same way as that of Earth, which makes tectonic phenomena unlikely on the Red Planet (Red Planet is an American film directed by Antony Hoffman, …).
After months of research involving teams in India, China, Europe (Europe is a land region that can be considered a…) and the United Arab Emirates (UNIS, for UNIversity of Svalbard, is a Norwegian university located…), no new crater impacts (For the crater of volcanic origin, see Volcanic crater For the crater of origin…) were found. This lack of clues led researchers, including Benjamin Fernando, a postdoctoral researcher at the University. higher education whose objective is…) of Oxford, to conclude that the earthquake was of tectonic origin (Tectonics (from the Greek “τ?κτων” or “tekt?n”…). According to a new study, it is likely due to the release of millennia-old stresses within the crust of Mars, caused by uneven cooling rates on the planet’s surface.
These discoveries challenge the conventional wisdom that Mars is too small and too cold to support tectonic processes. They could also provide valuable information for future Mars colonization projects (Mars is the center of many studies about future colonies. It is the…). Understanding risk areas could indeed prove crucial to establishing safe human habitats.
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