Hey space enthusiasts! 🚀 NASA's InSight lander just dropped a major bombshell: Mars' mantle is totally … lumpy! 🪐
Using seismometers that recorded over 1,300 marsquakes, researchers have mapped giant chunks of ancient impact debris scattered deep below the surface. Imagine a continent-size magma ocean (yep, a sea of molten rock 🌋) that formed 4.5 billion years ago when asteroids slammed into Mars, melting its early crust and mantle. Those colossal collisions blasted fragments and Martian material so deep that they've stuck around as lumps up to 4 km wide! 😲
'We've never seen the inside of a planet in such fine detail and clarity before,' says Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. These rocky relics are like frozen time capsules, telling us that Mars' interior cooled and evolved at a snail's pace. On Earth, plate tectonics would've erased most of these signatures over eons.
Thanks to InSight's 1,319 recorded marsquakes (talk about data overload!), scientists could trace the seismic waves weaving through these 'lumpy' zones. It's kind of like hitting debug mode in a smartphone: you get to see all the hidden processes at work. For space geeks craving the next big thing after the latest gadget drop, this is pure 🔥.
Why does it matter? These findings offer fresh clues about how rocky planets form and evolve – not just Mars, but our home planet and distant exoplanets, too. So next time you gaze at the Red Planet, remember: it's holding onto some ancient secrets right beneath its rusty surface. 💫
And for all the South Asian and Southeast Asian stargazers, just think of Mars as the ultimate drama series full of plot twists – only here, the plot is written in rock and magma! 📺🌟
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
