Geomorphology of Gale Crater, Rock on! |
Geomorphology of Gale Crater, Rock on! |
Sep 26 2012, 10:22 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
I'd like a discussion thread about the geology detatched from the time limits of current MSL threads. We had a 'Geomorphology of Cape York' thread that attracted a lot of interesting posts. How about 'Geomorphology of Gale Crater'? I have one or two ideas but many more questions, and I'd like to post them in a longer-running thread away from the day to day imaging discussion. Any other takers?
For starters, does anybody have a contour map of this place like the one at Meridiani with 5m intervals? ADMIN: You have your wishes fulfilled on UMSF (sometimes) |
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Sep 27 2012, 03:16 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
One rim of Gale Crater is quite a bit higher above mean than the other, right? Even though it appears to be a regular ringwall kind of structure, not breached nor significantly out of circular. It could be that much of Mt. Sharp was deposited in horizontal layers and the overall ground mass below the entire crater could have tilted before the deflation that exposed the central mound and revealed the horizons we now see as the floor. The entire subsurface table tilting would account for the different heights of the rim between north and south.
As to what could have caused the entire subsurface below Gale to tilt -- well, the Tharsis bulge was responsible for enormous deformations of the crust. Also, if this area of Mars ever went through extensive glaciations, the entire subsurface could have been pushed down by the weight of the glaciers during the deposition of Mt. Sharp's layers, and has since recovered its original elevation and orientation via isostatic rebound. Finally, if the material that supposedly infilled the entire crater (and has since been deflated) was emplaced by a rapidly moving force, such as the rush of waters or repeated pyroclastic flows from the same vent area, well, that material could have piled up on the far wall and filled back from there. If the force emplacing the materials was consistently from the same vector, you would get layers that are tilted in a sort of compromise between the gravity vector and the emplacement vector. In other words, there are a lot of ways on Mars that you can get tilted and discontinuous rock beds, you don't have to assume tectonic processes. -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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