Geology of Mars Essay

The crust of Mars is made up of oxidized iron dust mixed in with rocks and a thick layer of volcanic basalt, making the crust about thirty miles thick. Unlike Earth, the tectonic plates of Mars don’t run parallel with the core, they run perpendicular and push molten rock towards the surface. The mantle of Mars, thought to be susceptible to many volcanic eruptions, shows no signs of eruptions in millions of years. The mantle is made up of silicon, oxygen, iron, magnesium and is about 1200 miles thick. The core of Mars consists mostly of iron, nickel, and sulfur. The core doesn’t move so Mars has no magnetic field. The core is estimated to be about 1200 to 2400 miles thick. The internal structure of Mars tells scientists that if any life were to ever live on Mars they would have had to endure massive amounts of radiation. As mentioned, the internal layers of Mars vary greatly from Earth and still have yet to be seen by

Mars is a rocky body about half the size of Earth. Like Earth, Mars experiences seasons because of the tilt of its rotational axis, so its distance to the sun changes, according to NASA (n.d.). Telescope observations show water-iced clouds, polar ice, and volcanoes. Mars has the largest Volcanic Mountain in the solar system, named the Olympus Mons and has two moons in its orbit.

The quote above gives a quick biography on Mars. Mars is a dry, desert like planet that is between Earth and the Asteroid belt and Jupiter. It is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second closest to Earth (first being Venus). Mars is just over one half the size of Earth and has just over one third of Earth 's gravity, and the surface area on Mars is nearly the same as land area on Earth. It has a very weak magnetic field, so a lot of the Suns radiation gets to the surface. Its atmosphere is less than 1% as dense as Earth’s and 95% of it is carbon dioxide. 1 year on Mars is 687 days and has an average surface temperature of -62 degrees Celsius. But Mars does have its similarities, It travels only 4 miles per second slower around the sun, its tilt is 25 degrees, compared to Earth 's 23.5. 1 day on Mars is just 41 minutes longer than Earths, and Mars’ surface temperature range is the closest in the Solar System to Earth’s. http://www.universetoday.com/22603/mars-compared-to-earth/. But

Much to common disbelief, Mars and Earth have many things in common. Some of these factors include similarities in size, inclination, structure, composition and the presence of water on their surfaces (Universe Today, 2016). Mars is the next closest planet to Earth. It withholds all necessary elements needed for life to exist. These include water, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and nitrogen (HowStuffWorks, 2017). There are also unbelievable similarities between Mars’ atmosphere and the Earth’s atmosphere from billions of years ago. Like Mars, when the Earth was first formed it had no oxygen and its atmosphere was comprised of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Earth was not able to produce oxygen until photosynthetic bacteria developed (HowStuffWorks, 2017). Mars’ atmosphere consists of 95.3% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon and 0.2% oxygen.

How similar or different are Mars and Earth’s atmosphere? To start, Earth is mainly composed of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%) and argon (1%). Secondary compositions include the following: carbon dioxide, neon, helium, methane, krypton, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, xenon, ozone, iodine, carbon monoxide and ammonia (universetoday.com). On the other hand, the following is the composition of Mars atmosphere: Carbon dioxide (95.32%), Nitrogen (2.7%), Argon (1.6%), Oxygen (0.13%) and carbon monoxide (0.08%) (space.com). The atmosphere of Mars is cold and thin, making life exist difficult. To elaborate, liquid water currently can’t exist on any manner of surface on Mars (space.com). To continue, dust storms add to the pain of the thin atmosphere and make life even more difficult to not exist. These dust storms can completely cover the entire planet for whole months at a time (space.com). On the other side of the spectrum, it can even snow on Mars - making the north and south

Its thin atmosphere and most likely a completely waterless surface shows that any life that was to land on the Red Planet would have a hard time trying to survive. At that time, when life was found on Earth, Mars had an ocean, volcanoes and deltas, the difference between Mars and Earth is Mars rapidly lost its hold on habitability. According to scientist Mars lacks the ability to have a protective magnetic field, most of the water left the surface and escaped into space, this was caused by the exposure of the surface to the cosmic rays and ultraviolet light. There were only a few packs of water left on the surface, some remained at the poles whereas others may have remained under the

Scientist are not cognitive to whether there is active volcanism or not below the planet’s surface. Constant volcanic activity from the three largest volcanoes on Mars built up a region referred to the Tharsis Bulge (or Tharsis Rise). The region has had about the same mass as the dwarf planet Ceres, and it may have affected the planet’s rotation rate also as mentioned prior being an eccentric orbit. It has also been implicated in Mars plate tectonics and possibly also changes in its climate. Equally important, Mars shows a dry, dusty, and rocky surface. The Southern half of the planet is much more rugged, with many more craters and highlands. The Northern half of Mars has an abundance amount of smooth basins and what appear to be dry lakebeds and sinuous (having many curves and turns) riverbeds. This difference in surface characteristics is called the Martian dichotomy. Impact craters account for part of the dichotomy (contrast), and planetary (funded organization for exploring space) scientists suspect that long-melted glaciers may have carved out the terrain in other regions of

You may be thinking this is all another alien inspired theory. After all, data from a bunch of hung-over grad students and researchers at the E.T. institute doesn’t sound too solid. However, they may be on to something. NASA recently confirmed that Mars might be recovering from an ice age that ended roughly 400,000 years ago. Data from the NASA Mars Orbiter suggests that the Red Planet poles were once covered in massive amounts of ice. And these ice caps have been thawing since. This makes the Martian planet quite similar to Earth. It also would support the recent research of marshland on the Red Planet as well.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. This red planet is 3,389.5 kilometers in size. In pop culture, Mars was a symbol of war and aggression for thousands of years. The kilometer size was very shocking to me. Today, mars is covered in toxic soil and zapped with radiation as it says in the "Pop Culture Mars" article. That seems very dangerous. Mars' diameter is half of Earth's diameter. In the article, "Pop Culture Mars," it states that Mars will soon be a place that humans will soon be able to settle at. Mars has changed over many of years. It all started BC (before Christ). I honestly believe Mars has Earth-like features. Studies have shown that there was water found in Mars. I honestly have no idea about what technology that would be made

Physical characteristics of the Mars is half the diameter of the Earth, less dense than Earth. Mars' rotational period is similar to the Earth rotation. Another interesting facts about Mars is that, it has two Moons which are Deimos and Phobos. Deimos and Phobos are small and irregular shape. Also, Mars have largest volcano and second highest known mountain and largest canyon in the Solar System. Largest volcano and highest mountain is Olympus Mons, it has a height of 25 km and it is three times as tall as Mount Everest. Largest canyon is Valles Marineris is more than 4000 km long , 200 km wide, and up to 7 km deep. It is located along the equator of the Mars. Second interesting facts about the Mars except the similarities to the Earth, is the findings on the

It is painfully obvious the current mars and the old mars are very different. As humans, it looks like we have missed the prime time in mar's history in which the planet was covered in lakes and rivers temperatures were warmer plus the atmosphere was thicker. Then again the atmosphere was most likely made of carbon, so humans could not have lived there unless we had modern aid, but other forms of life could have found the very salty water on mars a home or safe haven for them. who knows the planet could still be hospitable for different kinds of life. One big question is where is mar's atmosphere? Without the protection of a magnetic field like earth, mar is unsheltered from the harsh environment of space. Being exposed to directly to space can let energetic particles of light from the sun rain down on the planet chemically react with particles in the atmosphere and eject them into space. NASA's MARVEN orbiter gave data that suggests that most of the mar's atmosphere was swept away by solar winds. Liberated carbon atoms could have entered the dirt of mars, forming creating what are called

Mars has two moons called Phobos and Deimos, which are irregularly shaped and covered in craters. Phobos is the larger of the two, at about 28x22 km in diameter, whereas Deimos is only 10x16 km across. They are thought to be captured main belt asteroids, because their composition is so different to that of their parent body, and they have much in common with C or D type asteroids. For this to have happened, the atmosphere of Mars must once have been much thicker, because its current atmosphere would be insufficient to capture Phobos through atmospheric braking.

The Earth continents are all different in some way. The most important are their physical differences. Most of them are wider from north to south than they are from east to west, so their “major-axis” is the north-south axis. Also, the differences in shapes and sizes of the continents results in big differences between their civilizations.

Plate tectonics occur not only just on Earth, but on other planets in the galaxy as well, such as Venus, Mars, and ancient Mercury. Since there are several planets in the Milky Way that have plate tectonics, it is questionable about if size is a key factor in the likelihood of tectonics on foreign planets. Vol-canoes, mountains, ocean ridges, earthquakes, and tsunamis all would not be possible without the movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates. Dependent upon heat for movement, tectonic plates are one of the victims of Earth’s active life. Since the Earth is not static in movement, landforms are moved and shifted slowly but surely each day. It is questionable if hydration and planet size are significant factors in the likelihood of plate tectonics on super-Earths.

just how orange it is! But hey, this comes from the same species that calls people with what looks to be orange hair “red heads”. It also has some similarities to Earth, if our planet’s major water source was in the frozen polar caps and the rest of the planet looked like an orange and rockier Sahara Desert. This is probably on account to Mars’s magnetosphere. Or should I say lack of one (SOMETHING). On Earth, the magnetosphere is responsible for blocking most of the energetic radiation from hitting the surface (SOMETHING). It has been suggested that 4.5 billion years ago, Mars did too have a magnetosphere due to it having a molten core but it has since dissipated as the core cooled (SOMETHING). While there is no global magnetosphere, data