The discovery, made by Arizona State University graduate student Andrew Ryan, is announced in a paper published April 27, 2012, in the scientific journal Science. The new result came out of research into possible interactions of lava flows and floods of water in the Elysium volcanic province of Mars.
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| Newer lava lying between two older plates of rough, hardened lava was still hot and plastic enough to form coils and spirals when the plates slid past one another. This image shows an area about 360 meters (1200 feet) wide in Cerberus Palus. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA |
"I examined probably 100 HiRISE images of the area. One evening," Ryan recounts, "I was making a second pass over the HiRISE images when I first noticed puzzling spiral patterns in an image near the southern margin of Cerberus Palus. I actually nearly overlooked that particular frame, thinking that it might not be too useful, being so far away from main study area farther north."
He notes, "The coils become noticeable in the full-resolution HiRISE image only when you really zoom in. They also tend to blend in with the rest of the light-gray terrain – that is, until you stretch the contrast a bit. I don't find it surprising that these were overlooked in the past. I nearly missed them too."
As Ryan explains, "The coils form on flows where there's a shear stress – where flows move past each other at different speeds or in different directions. Pieces of rubbery and plastic lava crust can either be peeled away and physically coiled up – or wrinkles in the lava's thin crust can be twisted around."
Source:
- Grad student discovers new form of lava flow on Mars, Arizona State University – April 26, 2012.
