Experts have long believed that there was not much going on inside Mars, but researchers at the Australian National University made their discovery after combing through data from NASA’s Mars Insight probe.
“Knowing that the mantle of Mars is still active is critical to our understanding of how Mars evolved as a planet,” said geophysicist Hrvoje Tkalić of the Australian National University in Australia.
The scientist added, that this information can help us answer basic questions about the solar system and the state of Mars’ core, mantle, and evolution of the magnetic field that it currently lacks, as Mars has very little magnetic field, which indicates a lack of internal activity.
Planetary magnetic fields are typically generated within a planet by something called a dynamo, which is a rotating, convective, electrically conductive fluid that converts kinetic energy into magnetic energy and spins a magnetic field into space.
Earth’s magnetic field protects us from cosmic radiation that can destroy life, but radiation levels on Mars are much higher even though the planet is far from the sun.
Scientists have discovered 47 new seismic events coming from a region on Mars called Cerberus Fossae, and most of them resemble the waveforms of two of the Cerberus Fossae earthquakes that occurred in May and July 2019, suggesting that smaller earthquakes are related to larger ones.