Marsquakes, Add Water and Shake

An anonymous reader writes "Analysis of Mars orbital data shows northern pit chains as evidence for relatively recent seismic activity. If marsquakes release water-ice to the surface, then such young features may be reshaping and eroding the landscape from below. No modern volcanic or seismic activity has ever been confirmed before. A long-standing mystery is why the northern hemisphere is smooth, while the martian south is so rugged."

Comments

One answer to the myster ;)

[alphaFlight]

"A long-standing mystery is why the northern hemisphere is smooth, while the martian south is so rugged."

http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20system/eph/e ph 2000.asp

(scroll down 3/4 the page) enjoy ;)

Re:Pit chains

[theapodan]

Parts of Mars are smooth for the same reason that parts of our moon are smooth, and parts of our earth are smooth. Extrusive vulcanism, and fissure vulcanism in particular, cause the formation of wide lava plains. And because of the low gravity and ineffective cooling on mars and the moon, the lava flows are allowed to smooth out more, making it more noticable.

The Columbia River plateu is a big fissure eruption that still is extant as a rock unit, and the catoctin formation in the appalachians is a historical one from around 800 million years ago, I think.

So there was no ocean, at least not restricted to the mare area, although that'd be really cool if there were.

The real question is, though nobody else seems to care, what are the effects of the incident cosmic radiation on the near surface soils, in particular, the possibility of iron hydroxides losing water to become iron oxides.