Between 3,000 and 3,500 million years ago, the surface of Mars underwent a change in its inclination from 20 to 25º with respect to its axis of rotation , a phenomenon that contributed significantly to the red planet acquiring the characteristic appearance that it presents today.
Now, a team of researchers from the University of Arizona and the French National Center for Scientific Research has presented in Nature a study in which they suggest that the one responsible for this is a colossal volcanic structure that forms a bulge on the equator of our world. neighbor .
This region, known as Tharsis , is about 12 kilometers thick and stretches for 5,000 , and originated as a result of a huge accumulation of lava that lasted for hundreds of millions of years. Tharsis thus acquired a mass of thousands of billions of tons . In fact, these experts maintain that this enormous mass caused a displacement of the crust and mantle of Mars with respect to its nucleus. According to the planetary geologist Sylvain Bouley , from the University of Paris-South, one of the authors of the essay, “if a similar event occurred on Earth, the French capital would be in the Arctic Circle.”
In his opinion, this approach could explain why the underground deposits of water ice that have been detected on the red planet are so far from the poles , something that, until now, was considered an anomaly. In addition, it solves two other questions: why the Tharsis dome is located precisely at the equator – it moved just to this point because it reached its new equilibrium position there – and why the river channels were formed exactly where their waters are today. dry beds . And it is that, until now, a satisfactory explanation had not been given at his disposal, which seems arbitrary.
Thus, the geologists and climatologists who have developed this new geophysical model of Mars indicate that before the cataclysm took place, its poles did not occupy the same place as they do today, and the rivers were distributed along a band located in the tropical zone of the southern hemisphere . This hypothesis suggests that the river valleys and the Tharsis dome probably formed around the same time. The great displacement of the crust and mantle would occur after the fluvial activity ended, about 3.5 billion years ago, which would give Mars the appearance it presents today.
However, scientists note that this research does not resolve some fundamental questions. For example, did the aforementioned super-displacement contribute to deactivating the magnetic field of Mars? Did it have something to do with the disappearance of your atmosphere? And with its extreme aridity?
