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August 12, 2012











The surface of Mars contains the longest and deepest system of canyons in our solar system, known as Valles Marineris (image at top and bottom of the page--Latin for Mariner Valleys and named for the Mariner 9 Mars orbiter of 1971, which discovered it). It is nearly 2,500 miles long — about nine times longer than the Earth's Grand Canyon. Scientists have wondered for four decades how it formed. Was it a big crack in Mars' shell that opened up?







Yin is very confident in his findings, but mysteries remain, he said, including how far beneath the surface the plates are located.* "I don't quite understand why the plates are moving with such a large magnitude or what the rate of movement is; maybe Mars has a different form of plate tectonics," Yin said.

The rate is much slower than on Earth."* The Earth has a broken shell with seven major plates; pieces of the shell move, and one plate may move over another. Yin is doubtful that Mars has more than two plates.




Valles Marineris stretches over 4000 km across Mars, mostly east-west just below the equator, as seen in this Viking 1 orbiter image mosaic below.



The Daily Galaxy via UCLA


Any geological thermal sources cropping up on the surface of Mars could be used as power sources so try and combine first settlements with those of water source locations. Photosynthetic bacteria would be seeded at water spots, or greenhouse enclosed plants, to provide oxygen. Use Earth's polar and salt resistant bacteria for frozen water or salt habitat deposits

What about Ganymede? http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/jovian_moons/ganymede.html The first hint of plate tectonics there had been uncovered by Voyager 2 in 1979.

I read the Ganymede link...

Not very convincing.

This needs follow up and peer review in order for us to accept such a claim. All too often we see these claims presented in the media then accepted without question by some people, only for the claim to slide into oblivion never to be heard of again.

Tectonics with only two plates doesn't make sense to me. Maybe there are more fault lines or plate boundaries, but hidden from view, or not visible from that distance. We will have to wait for a lot more information before we can make statements like the title of this article. Considering how many supposed scientific 'facts' about the cosmos have proved wrong in the last year alone, I would think that cosmologists and reporters would be very reluctant to present theory as statement, or are they not familiar with qualifying words like, 'perhaps', 'suggests', 'suppose', or 'hypothesise'? Yin's supposition is intriguing and should trigger some serious investigation into the nature of Mars' crust, but it is not yet even a theory, and certainly cannot be taken as a statement of fact.


Ummm.... You need to do better background Reaseach and get your acronyms correct! THEMIS stands for Thermal Imaging System! It is an instrument on the Mars Odyssey Mission and was built at ASU - http://themis.asu.edu/

If tectonic plates do exist on Mars, they will not be moving because Mars is an old and cold planet with no liquid core and no magnetic field. On Earth the tectonic plates move because the crust is thin and below is liquid magma, which cranks magnetic field as the earth spins.

It is too interesting why earth scientists ascribe uniqueness to 'earth'. If a theory of planetary evolution works it must be applied on every planet, obviously with the restrictions of composition, size, etc. Plate Tectonics for that case is limited to earth and assumed to have in one or two satellites in gaseous planetary orbits of solar system. But interestingly, only a very few in earth observes that the basics tenets of Plate Tectonic concept never passed even the first level of hypothesis testing. The felsic rocks (considered to represent continents) from ocean basins, deep roots of continental parts into mantle (from mantle tomography), equatorial bulging,southern hemispherical swelling and mantle protrusions along SSA-SWI, the AAD are a few examples to list out where 'plate concepts' fail, if ad hoc adjustments are not opted for. Approaching Mars, without any prejudice could help us to resolve at least a few of the theoretical crisis we experience with earth.
Interestingly, one could see a resemblance in the geometry of Earth and Mars and many of the surface features (hope our cameras on Mars are giving right pics). But theory making before understanding them by looking into simple similarities would not favour scientific growth.

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