Geomorphology of Gale Crater, Rock on! |
Geomorphology of Gale Crater, Rock on! |
Sep 26 2012, 10:22 PM
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#31
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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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Dec 1 2012, 01:30 AM
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#32
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
Yep, Mars' surface is primarily basaltic, no doubt. And like the Moon, much of the original crust has been highly brecciated by the Late Heavy Bombardment (the "event" which likely resulted in the Gale impact, among tens of thousands of other impacts of similar size).
Analysis of basalts, where they were emplaced, would give us a nice feel for what was happening in Mars' mantle while the majority of the basaltic eruptions occurred and the basalt was emplaced on the surface. Sort of a snapshot of the mantle during the period(s) of heavy volcanism. However, it is the alterations and re-depositions of that basaltic set of "building blocks" that tell us about the climate and conditions on the surface after the basalts were originally emplaced. So... Gale is not a good place at all to survey variations in directly emplaced basalt flows. The occasional unaltered chunks of basalt lying on Gale's floor were likely transported from somewhere else (be it a few kilometers to hundreds of kilometers from where a rock might rest right now). It is, however, a wonderful place to look at the history of re-deposition and alteration of rock beds (and even deflation of covering beds), much of which (it seems to me) has to have happened when the alteration, deposition and deflation processes that went on were far more active than they are now. Since one of the main purposes of Curiosity is to try and characterize those processes (because those processes, once understood, then highly constrain the climate and environment in which they occurred), Gale is a very good place. Precisely because this is a place where we can study the history of those processes and try to understand them. -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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