Dozens of mysterious blobs discovered inside Mars may be the remains of “failed planets”
Giant impact structures, including the potential remains of ancient “protoplanets”, can be deeply hidden below the surface of Marchnew research advice. The mysterious lumps, which have been perfectly preserved in the immobile bowels of the red planet for billions of years, can go back to the beginning of the solar system.
In a new study, published on August 28 in the journal ScienceThe researchers analyzed the “Marsquake” data collected by Insight Lander of NASA, which Tremors monitored under the Martian surface from 2018 to 2022, when he met a premature disappearance Dust blocking its solar panels. Looking at how these Marsed skittles vibrated in the motionless mantle of the red planet, the team discovered several drops never seen before densiting that the surrounding material.
The researchers have identified dozens of potential structures, measuring up to 2.5 miles (4 kilometers), at different depths in the Mars coat, which is made up of 960 miles (1,550 km) of solid rock which can reach temperatures as high as 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius).
“We have never seen the interior of a planet in detail and clarity before”, the main author of the study Constantinos CharalambousA planetary scientist at Imperial College in London, said in a NASA statement. “What we see is a coat dotted with ancient fragments.”
Based on the size and depth of hidden objects, the researchers think that the structures were carried out when objects struck in March 4.5 billion years ago, at the start of the solar system. Some of the objects were probably protoplanets – giant rocks capable of becoming full -size planets if they had remained intact, the researchers wrote.
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The researchers first noticed the buried structures when they found that some of the Mars -quake signals took more time to cross parts of the coat than others. By retracing these signals, they identified regions with higher densities than the surrounding rock, suggesting that these sections are not coming from it.
Mars is a unique planet, which means that its crust remains entirely intact, unlike the earth, which is divided into tectonic plates. While the pieces of the crust of the earth under -Ducts through the limits of the plates, they sink into the coat, which increases and fall the melted rock in our planet and descend by convection. But on Mars, it does not happen, which means His coat is set in place And do not found completely.
The newly discovered blobs are additional proof that the interior of March is much less active than that of the earth.
“Their survival to date tells us that the Mars mantle has evolved slowly over billions of years,” said Charalambous. “On earth, features like these may well have been erased.”
Because Mars has no tectonic activity, the skittles are rather triggered by Clain of land, crunchy rocks or weather impactswhich frequently swivel the surface of the planet. These tremors were also used to detect other hidden objects below the surface of the red planet, including a Giant underground ocean discovered using information data last year.
In total, Insight captured data on March 1,319, in its mission of around four years. However, scientists were always surprised that they could map the bowels of the planet in detail.
“We knew that Mars was a time capsule with the registers of his early training, but we do not plan how much we could see with Insight,” said the co-author of the study Tom Pikesaid a spatial exploration engineer at the Imperial College in London, in the press release.
