Mars has a volcanic 'heart'!


Washington, April 13 (IANS): After the discovery of "Australia" by NASA's Curiosity Rover, scientists have now located a heart shape on Tharsis Bulge, a region home to some of the Red planet's biggest ancient volcanoes.

Formed most likely through volcanic activity, the heart shape was spotted by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter orbiting 170 miles above.

Located south of the huge shield volcano Ascraeus Mons, it measures approximately 200 metres across. The feature is multi-layered and rises above the surrounding landscape.

"Perhaps this feature is an ancient vent structure (an opening in the ground from which volcanic lava emerges) that has been more resistant to erosion than the surrounding area, so that it resembles 'inverted' terrains," planetary scientist Ramy El-Maarry was quoted as saying.

Inverted terrains often occur when some part of the landscape becomes hardened to erosion.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity's camera earlier photographed a rather interesting-looking rock formation that resembles Australia.

  

Top Stories


Leave a Comment

Title: Mars has a volcanic 'heart'!



You have 2000 characters left.

Disclaimer:

Please write your correct name and email address. Kindly do not post any personal, abusive, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent, discriminatory or unlawful or similar comments. Daijiworld.com will not be responsible for any defamatory message posted under this article.

Please note that sending false messages to insult, defame, intimidate, mislead or deceive people or to intentionally cause public disorder is punishable under law. It is obligatory on Daijiworld to provide the IP address and other details of senders of such comments, to the authority concerned upon request.

Hence, sending offensive comments using daijiworld will be purely at your own risk, and in no way will Daijiworld.com be held responsible.