Snapshot: evidence of recent explosive volcanism on Mars


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The search for life on Mars continues. But rather than chasing modern life, Perseverance, NASA’s latest Martian rover, will soon start looking for signs of former life having once existed in the now dry and barren world. And while most researchers agree that the surface of Mars is no longer hospitable, some suspicious lives could have a fighting chance underground.

A new paper adds weight to this theory.

The study, led by researcher David Horvath of the Planetary Science Institute, reassesses how long the Red Planet’s volcanoes have been active. It is currently believed that most eruptions occurred between 3 and 4 billion years ago. There is also evidence to suggest that the youngest volcanoes on Mars were active around 3 million years ago. Now, new data from satellites orbiting Mars indicates that volcanoes continued to rage on Mars until the much more recent past – barely 50,000 years ago.

Elysium Planitia is the second largest volcanic region on Mars and is home to NASA’s InSight lander, which has been studying tectonic activity on Mars for three years. In this region, researchers have spotted what appear to be recent volcanic deposits around a young tectonic fissure known as the Cerberus Fossae system. “This feature is a mysterious dark deposit, covering an area slightly larger than Washington DC,” Horvath said in a Press release. “If we were to compress the geological history of Mars into a single day, it would have happened in the very last second.”

Horvath believes that recent volcanism represents a sort of “last breath of erupting matter”. He also can’t help but notice its proximity to InSight, just 1,600 kilometers away. Earlier this year, InSight even detected two powerful earthquakes near Cerberus Fossae. These earthquakes and others have led some researchers to consider the possibility that magma is still circulating inside the red planet. “The interaction of the ascending magma and the icy substrate in this region could have provided favorable conditions for microbial life quite recently,” says Horvath. And if the area is still active, he thinks there is a possibility that life is still hiding there.

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