A region on the Red Planet may still be volcanically active, melting ground ice and creating conditions favorable to life, astronomers say.
The tallest mountain on any of the Solar System’s planets is Olympus Mons, a giant extinct volcano on Mars that is some 14 miles high. That’s about two and a half times the height of Mount Everest. This behemoth formed some 3 billion years ago when the Red Planet was peppered with volcanoes spewing vast quantities of magma across the Martian planes.
First, some background. Planetary geologists have long thought that the Cerberus Fossae fissures must have formed in lava plains as they cooled and deformed. They can determine a rough age for these plains by counting the number of impact craters, which suggests the region is between 500,000 and 2.5 million years old — relatively young in Martian terms.
In geological terms, that is brand new. “The Cerberus Fossae mantling unit is interpreted to be the youngest volcanic product discovered on Mars to date,” says Horvath and colleagues.
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