back to article Li-quid hot mag-ma: There's a Martian meteorite in your backyard. How'd it get there?

New research adds extra support for where exactly six meteorites that travelled from Mars to Earth millions of years ago, called "nakhlites", may have originated. It also helps establish what the very unusual volcanic activity on the red planet at the time may have looked like. As the paper states, "Martian plume-fed edifices …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "an asteroid hit the volcano, leaving a crater and sending the materials rocketing to Earth"

    Given that an atmosphere would likely have slowed down the ejecta by a significant margin, would that mean that, at that time, Mars already had no atmosphere ?

    We know that it lost its magnetic field billions of years ago, could that not help determine when ?

    1. Mark 85

      Re: "an asteroid hit the volcano, leaving a crater and sending the materials rocketing to Earth"

      Do we know if Mars ever had an atmosphere? Or perhaps an atmosphere as we think of one?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "an asteroid hit the volcano, leaving a crater and sending the materials rocketing to Earth"

        It definitely had an atmosphere early in its evolution since there is plenty of evidence of liquid water in the form of dried-up rivers, lakes and oceans. That would need a hefty increase in atmospheric pressure from the current value. The current estimate is that the Martian atmosphere had bled away by about 3 billion years ago, at which point water could only really exist either as ice or water vapour.

    2. Peter Ford

      Re: "an asteroid hit the volcano, leaving a crater and sending the materials rocketing to Earth"

      My reading is that, although the lava flow was billions of years ago, the asteroid impact that ejected the rocks was much more recent: presumably long after the atmosphere went away.

    3. james 68

      Re: "an asteroid hit the volcano, leaving a crater and sending the materials rocketing to Earth"

      Not to be a pedant or anything but Mars still has an atmosphere. Sure it's low pressure, but it's there. Hence why mars landers use atmospheric braking and parachutes to reach the surface and why said landers tend to send back remarkable photos of dust devils and storms.

  2. Cynical Observer
    Alien

    The chances of anything...

    But he said it was difficult to know which idea to believe because the uncertainty in the measurements was so high (PDF).

    Can't help it.... Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. Vulch
    Big Brother

    Dammit

    Now I'm earworming the headline as a verse of "Hippopotamus" by Sparks...

    Again...

    Probably as intended...

    1. Pompous Git Silver badge

      Re: Dammit

      Wow! Happy, happy, joy, joy! A new Sparks release. I didn't know. Thx...

  4. ma1010
    Alert

    Please tell me that

    ...depleted shergottites...

    has nothing to do with shaggoths! If so, early Mars might have been a very scary place.

    1. Stoneshop

      Re: Please tell me that

      If so, they were depleted. Exhausted. Devoid of active shoggotry.

      So no big deal.

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Happy

      Re: Please tell me that

      Are you sure that shouldn't read Shoggotitties?

      They're basically Shoggoth pornstars, sometimes known as Shaggoths.

      What did you expect? The Great Old Ones were so named as they were great at the oldest profession of all...

    3. Keith Oborn

      Re: Please tell me that

      That's "shoggoths"--

      "shaggoths" are randy teenagers wearing lots of black!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "shaggoths" are randy teenagers wearing lots of black!

        Most goths these days are a bit older than teens...

  5. Alistair
    Windows

    ............ weeeeeeeeeeeeellll.

    That devolved rather quickly ....

    Martian eruptions getting smacked and spewing itty bitty bits about and all that....

  6. Stevie

    Bah!

    The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one.

    1. Chris G

      Re: Bah!

      Stevie, I'm sure you were thinking of this "Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing/happening are millions to one.

      But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

      1. adrianww
        Alien

        Re: Bah!

        Nope, I'm pretty sure that Stevie said exactly what he intended to say. Although it was probably Ogilvy who told him...

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: Bah!

          I distinctly remember hearing Richard Burton say it...

          1. adrianww
            Alien

            Re: Bah!

            Yeah, but it were Ogilvy what told him as well.

            1. Stevie
              Pint

              Re: Bah!

              Beer for adrianww. Got it in one.

              I was hoping for someone to snap back "but still they come!"

              Tsk! Youth of today, no idea, wet behind the wotsits, fought wars, Rourke's Drift etc etc.

          2. Stevie

            Re: Bah!

            No beer for I ain't Spartacus.

            It was Justin Hayward, *not* Richard Burton.

            Though it *was* Richard Burton's voice that made me stay for half an hour in HMV while it played over the P.A. instead of ducking in for a quick buy on my way between dentist appointment and work, and he was responsible for my buying that record when the side was finished instead of the one I went into HMV for.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This makes sense

    It doesn't look like Mars has had plate tectonics since a very early phase in its evolution, so since then, the lithosphere has remained effectively stationary over the Mantle. Plumes would continue to feed partial melting under the same point in the surface allowing volcanoes to grow and grow. Here on Earth, the movement of the plates means that plumes leave traces on the surface (such as the Hawaiian islands and Emperor seamounts in the Pacific) so volcanoes can't grow too large before they drift away from the plume head and become extinct.

    We also know from plumes here on Good Old Earth that they are amazingly long lived. The Reunion Plume is at least 66 million years old (when it created the immense Deccan Traps and did the hard work of killing the dinosaurs), that under Kerguelen is in excess of 120My. Even if it was only supplying a fraction of a cubic kilometre of magma every year, that would allow for some massive volcanoes to grow on Mars.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mars volcanoes

    Actually this suggests Mars has been essentially geologically dead for over a billion years.

    Interestingly this means any life that might have started could be fossilized on or just under the surface, possibly less than a metre down. Start digging!

    (cough manned Mars mission sometime in 2022 /cough)

    1. lorisarvendu
      Mushroom

      Re: Mars volcanoes

      "Interestingly this means any life that might have started could be fossilized on or just under the surface, possibly less than a metre down. Start digging!"

      Have you not seen the movie "Life"? Don't dig for anything and under no circumstances bring anything back!

  9. The March Hare

    Fossilized life under the surface..

    Can we just rename the planet LV-426 and be done with it?

  10. Alister

    is that a Martian meteorite in your pocket...

    ...or are you just having a hot flush?

    What?

    What did you think I was going to say?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Martian

    Someone page Mark Watney!

    also potatoes would not grow very well due to perchlorates and heavy metals, humanure or no.

    Weed maybe (aka canabis indica) might, we demand this be tested by NASA/ROSCOSMOS.

    Plus sell it in .CA as "Space Weed" :-)

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