Maps Show Mars Was Once More Like Earth

vrioux writes "NASA scientists have discovered additional evidence that Mars once underwent plate tectonics, slow movement of the planet's crust, like the present-day Earth. A new map of Mars' magnetic field made by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft reveals a world whose history was shaped by great crustal plates being pulled apart or smashed together. ."

Comments

Re:probably more common than we think

[frank378]

IIRC it's not just a molten core, but a spinning molten core made up mostly of iron which allows for a significant magnetic field to deflect solar winds.

I *think* I recall hearing that one of the reasons Mars could not "keep it together" the way the Earth did is because the core may have a different atomic/elemental makeup.

Any planetary scientists that can attest to/debunk this?

Re:probably more common than we think

[J'raxis]

Tectonics might not be. One of the prevailing theories of why we have tectonic plates is that a sizeable chunk of the earth's crust got sheared off by a massive impact, leaving the remaining chunks of crust to slowly slide around the surface of the earth. The impactor that struck the earth hit at a particularly fortuitous angle; a little bit off and it would have destroyed the planet instead. Whether or not these kinds of impacts are improbable or not is still an open question -- one theory is that the impactor formed at one of the earth's Lagrange points, and it wasn't just a "random" blow from an asteroid, so it may be more common than it at first sounds.

Incidentally, the impactor blew that crustal material clear into orbit, which ultimately coalesced into the moon. See the giant impact theory entry on Wikipedia.

Best evidence for water

[Council]

To me, the best evidence for water is this map, which they always show at NASA presentations on Mars. It's a topographic map colored by altitude, and you see that the areas below a certain depth are almost completely crater-free, contrasted strongly with the areas above that depth. This, to me, is a really, really strong argument that it was once covered in water and had a coastline.

Looking at that map always makes an Earth-like Mars seem much more real to me.