A large active mantle plume has been discovered inside Mars. This was reported by the University of Arizona’s press service.
Mantle plumes are magma flows emanating from the planet’s core. When they reach the crust there is often volcanic activity – for example, the Hawaii hotspot is associated with a mantle plume. For a long time, Mars was thought to be a dead planet with no underground activity for three billion years, but recent research shows this is not the case.
Adrien Broquet and his colleagues believe they have proven the existence of an active cloud on Mars. They analyzed volcanic activity in the Elysian Plain region, where several major eruptions have occurred over the past 200 million years. In a previous article, the authors found traces of a volcanic eruption on the surface 53,000 years ago in this region, which is considered a very short time by geological standards. On Earth, volcanism is associated with plate tectonics or mantle plumes, and a plume can be identified by a characteristic sequence of events. The hot material of the stream presses the surface from the inside, lifting and stretching the crust. The molten rock from the smoke then erupts as basalts forming vast volcanic plains.
The Elysian Plain has corresponding tracks. According to experts, in the past the surface has risen more than one and a half kilometers, making it one of the highest areas of the northern plains of Mars. An analysis of the subtle variations in the gravitational field showed that this uplift is shielded from the planet’s depths, which is consistent with the presence of a mantle plume. Other calculations have shown that the bottom of the impact craters slopes in the direction of the smoke, supporting the idea that something was pushing the surface up after the craters were formed. Finally, when the researchers analyzed the region with a tectonic model, they found that the only way to explain the expansion responsible for the formation of the Cerberus troughs was the presence of a giant cloud 4,000 kilometers wide.
The presence of an active mantle cloud on Mars should affect the analysis of InSight seismometer data.