Giant Mantle Plume Reveals Mars Is More Active Than Previously Thought Orbital observations unveil the presence of an enormous mantle plume pushing the surface of Mars upward and driving intense volcanic and seismic activity. On Earth, shifting tectonic plates reshuffle the planet’s surface and
Artist’s impression of an active mantle plume – a large blob of warm and buoyant rock – rising from deep inside Mars and pushing up Elysium Planitia, a plain within the planet’s northern lowlands. Volcanism at Elysium Planitia originates from the Cerberus Fossae, highlighted in red, a set of young fissures that stretches for more than 800 miles across the Martian surface. Recently, NASA’s InSight lander found that nearly all Martian quakes, or marsquakes, emanate from this one region.
Mantle plumes are large blobs of warm and buoyant rock that rise from deep inside a planet and push through its intermediate layer – the mantle – to reach the base of its crust, causing earthquakes, faulting and volcanic eruptions. The island chain of Hawaii, for example, formed as the Pacific plate slowly drifted over a mantle plume., but this isn’t expected on a small and supposedly cold world like Mars,” Andrews-Hanna said.
This image taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter shows an oblique view focusing on one of the fractures making up the Cerberus Fossae system. The fractures cut through hills and craters, indicating their relative youth. Credit: SA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Mantle plumes, which can be viewed as analogous to hot blobs of wax rising in lava lamps. give away their presence on Earth through a classical sequence of events. Warm plume material pushes against the surface, uplifting and stretching the crust. Molten rock from the plume then erupts as flood basalts that create vast volcanic plains.
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Mars sports massive hidden plume of searing rockCharles Q. Choi is a contributing writer for Space.com and Live Science. He covers all things human origins and astronomy as well as physics, animals and general science topics. Charles has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida. Charles has visited every continent on Earth, drinking rancid yak butter tea in Lhasa, snorkeling with sea lions in the Galapagos and even climbing an iceberg in Antarctica. Visit him at http://www.sciwriter.us
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