Field Geology at Mars’ Equator Points to Ancient Megaflood
Floods of unimaginable magnitude once washed through Gale Crater on Mars’ equator around 4 billion years ago – a finding that hints at the possibility that life may have existed there, according to data collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover and analyzed in joint project by scientists from Jackson State University, Cornell, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Hawaii.
The research, “Deposits from Giant Floods in Gale Crater and Their Implications for the Climate of Early Mars,” was published on November 5, 2020, in Nature Scientific Reports.
The study, led by John Grotzinger, M.D., Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and Bob Morris, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., examined two bedrock, or core, deposits termed Aso and Ogopogo, commonly referred to as "monster deposits," beginning near the Martian equator at levels beneath the site of the laboratory's landing site. Mars is the second planet from the Sun, and its and Earth's magnetic poles differ by about 85 degrees. The magnetic field of the Sun is generated by the collision of plasma blown from the Sun's surface to Earth's atmosphere; charged particles just outside the Sun suffer barrage of solar winds nicknamed "sail brines," powered by the Sun's magnetic activity.
The phenomenon of magnetic storms – a phenomenon that scientists on Earth are familiar with – is meant to batter the Earth's magnetic field, causing the Sun to overextend and produce storms that may impact life on Earth on a cosmic scale. The same is true here on a geological scale, fueling geological events such as meteorite impacts, frequent gorges and floods and precipitating megafloods, which are multiple floods of perhaps millions to billions of cubic miles of melted sediment from globally catastrophic waves of upwelling in the Western Interior Seaway, or old ocean p.'s.
As the astronaut team on board the deck of the M.S. Collins took pictures of Curiosity's tracks following the rover's landing on Mars , Michael Meyer, a M.S. Collins Scholar in Geology in the College of Education at Clemson University, observed Curiosity's tracks. Towards the end of their observations (about 6:45 a.m.; Launch Camera Images), the team turned away from Curiosity and took the RAW images off the back roll of a 45 mm camera attached to the ship. Over the mission's 274-day duration, the images have captured 290,000 square miles of terrain behind Earth's atmosphere, stretching from launch pad AEO to the rover's final resting place beneath Gale crater. Since the pictures were taken, Curiosity has driven 504 feet and interviewed more than 45 cache sites searching for minerals – mineral-bearing material – and geographic features.
During their observations, the astronauts saw the buttes of the Trinity Regio emerge from the Chevallier Belt marks, and Pikhayk area, near mid-latitude, that is covered in mudstone, but confirmed the presence of calcium sulfate that the rover's
Floods of unimaginable magnitude once washed through Gale Crater on Mars’ equator around 4 billion years ago – a finding that hints at the possibility that life may have existed there, according to data collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover and analyzed in joint project by scientists from Jackson State University, Cornell, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Hawaii.
The research, “Deposits from Giant Floods in Gale Crater and Their Implications for the Climate of Early Mars,” was published on November 5, 2020, in Nature Scientific Reports.
The study, led by John Grotzinger, M.D., Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and Bob Morris, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., examined two bedrock, or core, deposits termed Aso and Ogopogo, commonly referred to as "monster deposits," beginning near the Martian equator at levels beneath the site of the laboratory's landing site. Mars is the second planet from the Sun, and its and Earth's magnetic poles differ by about 85 degrees. The magnetic field of the Sun is generated by the collision of plasma blown from the Sun's surface to Earth's atmosphere; charged particles just outside the Sun suffer barrage of solar winds nicknamed "sail brines," powered by the Sun's magnetic activity.
The phenomenon of magnetic storms – a phenomenon that scientists on Earth are familiar with – is meant to batter the Earth's magnetic field, causing the Sun to overextend and produce storms that may impact life on Earth on a cosmic scale. The same is true here on a geological scale, fueling geological events such as meteorite impacts, frequent gorges and floods and precipitating megafloods, which are multiple floods of perhaps millions to billions of cubic miles of melted sediment from globally catastrophic waves of upwelling in the Western Interior Seaway, or old ocean p.'s.
As the astronaut team on board the deck of the M.S. Collins took pictures of Curiosity's tracks following the rover's landing on Mars , Michael Meyer, a M.S. Collins Scholar in Geology in the College of Education at Clemson University, observed Curiosity's tracks. Towards the end of their observations (about 6:45 a.m.; Launch Camera Images), the team turned away from Curiosity and took the RAW images off the back roll of a 45 mm camera attached to the ship. Over the mission's 274-day duration, the images have captured 290,000 square miles of terrain behind Earth's atmosphere, stretching from launch pad AEO to the rover's final resting place beneath Gale crater. Since the pictures were taken, Curiosity has driven 504 feet and interviewed more than 45 cache sites searching for minerals – mineral-bearing material – and geographic features.
During their observations, the astronauts saw the buttes of the Trinity Regio emerge from the Chevallier Belt marks, and Pikhayk area, near mid-latitude, that is covered in mudstone, but confirmed the presence of calcium sulfate that the rover's
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