Mar's Impact Crater: The Largest in Solar System Sparks Intense Scientific Interest

Recent analysis of the Red Planet's terrain using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Global Surveyor spacecraft observations revealed what appeared to be by far the largest impact crater ever found in the solar system.

NASA’s Viking orbiters observed in the 1970s that the bottom two-thirds of Mars was about two miles higher in altitude than its top third. Planetary scientists have since bandied about two hypotheses to explain the dichotomy: either some odd internal dynamics of Mars generated a thicker planetary crust in the south, or the northern surface was blown away by a mega-meteor impact.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor have provided detailed information about the elevations and gravity of the Red Planet's northern and southern hemispheres. A new study using this information may solve one of the biggest remaining mysteries in the solar system: Why does Mars have two strikingly different kinds of terrain in its northern and southern hemispheres? The huge crater is creating intense scientific interest.

The mystery of the two-faced nature of Mars has perplexed scientists since the first comprehensive images of the surface were beamed home by NASA spacecraft in the 1970s. A giant northern basin that covers about 40 percent of Mars' surface, sometimes called the Borealis basin, is the remains of a colossal impact early in the solar system's formation, the new analysis suggests. At 8,500 kilometers (5,300 miles) across, it is about four times wider than the next-biggest impact basin known, the Hellas basin on southern Mars. An accompanying report calculates that the impacting object that produced the Borealis basin must have been about 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) across.

That's larger than Pluto. The impact gouged out a crater the size of the combined areas of Asia, Europe and Australia, researchers reported in the journal Nature. It appears to have held an ocean in the early days of the planet, before Mars lost so much of its atmosphere and the water either sublimated away or froze beneath the surface.

"This is an impressive result that has implications not only for the evolution of early Mars, but also for early Earth's formation," said Michael Meyer, the Mars chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. When the solar system was just maturing 4 billion years ago, big objects often smashed into one another. The formation of the Earth's Moon is attributed to a giant impact on the Earth by a Mars-sized body.

"We haven't proved the giant-impact hypothesis, but I think we've shifted the tide," said Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Andrews-Hanna and co-authors Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., report the new findings in the journal Nature this week.

This northern-hemisphere basin on Mars is one of the smoothest surfaces found in the solar system. The southern hemisphere is high, rough, heavily cratered terrain, which ranges from 4 to 8 kilometers (2.5 to 5 miles) higher in elevation than the basin floor.

Other giant impact basins have been discovered that are elliptical rather than circular. But an analysis of the Martian surface from NASA's two Mars orbiters to reveal the clear elliptical shape of Borealis basin, which is consistent with being an impact crater.

One complicating factor in revealing the elliptical shape of the basin was that after the time of the impact, which must have been at least 3.9 billion years ago, giant volcanoes formed along one part of the basin rim in the Tharsis region (visible from Earth to 19th century observers) -a region that is only 2 million years old -very recent in geological terms -a huge region of high, rough terrain that obscures the basin's outlines. It took a combination of gravity data, which tend to reveal underlying structure, with data on current surface elevations to reconstruct a map of Mars elevations as they existed before the volcanoes erupted.

"In addition to the elliptical boundary of the basin, there are signs of a possible second, outer ring -- a typical characteristic of large impact basins," Banerdt said.

In a second report, Margarita Marinova and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology say they made three-dimensional simulations of the impact.

"The impact would have to be big enough to blast the crust off half of the planet, but not so big that it melts everything. We showed that you really can form the dichotomy that way," said Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

He said shock waves from the impact would have traveled through the planet and disrupted the crust on the other side, causing changes in the magnetic field. In a third report, Nimmo and colleagues said such magnetic anomalies have been measured in Mars' southern hemisphere.

"We haven't proved the giant-impact hypothesis, but I think we've shifted the tide. The majority of the evidence is now in favor of the giant impact," Andrews-Hanna said in a statement.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy posts:

The Theia Hypothesis: New Evidence Emerges that Earth and Moon Were Once the Same

Source links:

http://www.nasa.gov/mro.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625223036.htm

Comments

[Glen]

This is not a new theory, but these findings seem to support what is found here: http://metaresearch.org/solar%20system/eph/eph2000.asp

[paperscience]

So Mars might have been struck by an object larger than Pluto early in it's history. And Earth was struck by 'a Mars sized object' early in it's history creating Earth's Moon. Is there a connection here???????

[Jasmina]

hi i have a question What is the largest crater on Mars called?

[Dave]

Interesting theory paperscience. But I'm guessing scientists could tell if Earth collided with Mars based on the type of rocks they now both share? I think that's how they can tell the moon collided with us. But I'm not sure.

[Mick Russom]

Some large planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, don't leave evidence of mega-impacts. I would say given Jupiter size, that Mars-sized bodies could have impacted Jupiter and we wouldn't see it today.

[mekon]

Mar's Impact Crater: should be Mars' Impact crater

[pacmania1982]

@paperscience - Mars' largest crater I believe is called Olympus Mons. Its also taller than anything else in our solar system and is 88,580 ft in height

Do a search on google for wiki olympus mons, there is a really interesting article and fantastic pic on Wikipedia

pac

[Qev]

@paperscience, Dave: Large impacts are thought to have been relatively common during the formation of the solar system. Also, Mars itself didn't collide with the Earth (otherwise there wouldn't be a Mars now), but rather another Mars-sized body called "Theia" that likely formed in a similar orbit to Earth.

@pacmania1982: I think you meant to say 'volcano', instead of 'crater'. :)

[Joe]

Mar's Impact Crater: should be Mars' Impact crater.

[Carl]

If Mars had an atmosphere at the time of impact what would have been the result of this type of collision?

[claudio]

Interesting...interesting theory.

Difficult to assess the data of the huge impact without being on the surface of the planet.

However there is NO axis tilt on Mars...like we have on earth...this would be an indicator against a huge impactor.

Regards to the old large impactor....that tilted our axis.

[Greg2600]

This impact would fall under the "Late Heavy Bombardment/Gas Giant Migration" theories, when the solar system was full of planetary impacts between 3.8 and 4.1 billion years ago. It sounds like there could have been oceans on Mars, and perhaps early forms of life formed, but were extinguished by this giant impact. Similar possibilities have been put out there for Earth as well. I'm just throwing this out there, but could it have been possible life formed on Mars (it was cooler), and this impact splattered the Earth with debris? Which could have begun life on this planet?

[BRITTNEY A.]

I THINK THAT THEY SHOULD SAY MORE ABOUT IT CHUZ IM DOIN A PROJECT ON THIS NND IT REALLY AINT HELP ME !! I REALLY AINT GETTIN ANYWHERE SO UMM YEA THATS HOW I FEEL LOL

[Lally]

IMO there is another, equally plausible theory relating to a giant Mars impact which suggests that axial displacement did indeed taken place following a huge impact event. Observational techniques were used to identify the location of the impact site that caused the axial displacement, and the geology of Mars is used to substantiate this. More can be found here: www.theimpactandexitevent.com
Hope this is of interest, guys.

[Paul H]

Mars size body?Why not Mars itself?What if they just bearly tuched each ather and did not have a full impact? That would explain a lot, the frozen animals,extra water on earth,Mars lost magnetic fields,end of ice age on earth,etc etc.Out of this was the Bible story created by Jews.