The enormous impact structure, including the potential ruins of the ancient “Protoplanet,” may lurk deeply beneath the surface of Mars, with hints for new research. The mystical mass, which has been completely preserved within the motionless organs of the Red Planet for billions of years, may trace back to the beginning of the solar system.
In a new study published August 28th in Journal Science, researchers analyzed “Marsquake” data collected by NASA’s Insight Lander. This met an untimely end mise from dust that monitored the tremor beneath the Mars surface from 2018 to 2022 and blocked solar panels. By seeing how these Marzquakes vibrate through the inactive mantle of the red planet, the team discovered some unprecedented chunks that are far more dense than the surrounding material.
Researchers have identified potential structures up to 2.5 miles (4 km) at various depths within the Martian mantle. It is made of 960 miles (1,550 km) of solid rock, which can reach high temperatures of 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500°C).
“We have never seen the interior of a planet with such fine details and clarity before,” the study of Constantino Schalalambus, a planetary scientist at Imperial College in London, said in a NASA statement. “What we see is a mantle studded with ancient fragments.”
Based on the size and depth of hidden objects, researchers believe that the structure was created in the early days of the solar system when objects were hit by Mars by 4.5 billion years ago. Some objects could have been protoplanets – giant rocks that could grow into a full-size planet if left undisturbed, researchers write.
Related: 32 things on Mars that don’t seem to be there
Researchers first noticed buried structures when they discovered that some of the mass cake signals took longer to pass through parts of the mantle than others. By tracking these signals, they identified areas that were more dense than the surrounding rocks, suggesting that those sections did not occur there.
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Mars is a single plate planet. In other words, unlike the Earth’s crust, the crust remains completely intact and is divided into tectonic plates. They sink into the mantle, just as fragments of Earth’s crust subside through the plate boundaries, and molten rocks within the planet rise and fall through convection. But on Mars, this does not happen. That is, its mantle is fixed and does not melt completely.
The newly discovered blob further proves that Mars’s interior is far less active than Earth’s interior.
“Their survival today shows us that the Martian mantle has evolved slowly over billions of years,” Charalambus said. “On Earth, it is possible that most of these features have been erased.”
Because Mars lacks structural activity, mass cakes are instead caused by landslides, cracks in rocks, or meteor impacts, frequently immersing the planet’s surface. These tremors are also used to detect other hidden objects beneath the surface of the red planet, including the giant underground seas discovered using insight data last year.
In total, Insight captured data on 1,319 Marsquakes during the mission for about four years. However, scientists were still surprised that they could map the inner side of a planet in great detail.
“We knew that Mars was a time capsule with records of early formation, but we didn’t expect how clearly we could see it with our insight,” said Tom Pike, co-author of Study, a space exploration engineer at Imperial College London, in a statement.
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