The freshest outflow channel, Floods in Athabasca Valles Options

[SigurRosFan]

Release date: April 03, 2006

- http://themis.asu.edu/features/athabascafloods

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Based on the counts, however, the valley is between 2 million and 30 million years old. If true, that makes it the youngest outflow channel on Mars.

Estimates of the volume range from 10,000 to 10 million cubic meters per second. For comparison, the Mississippi River's flow averages 17,000 cubic meters per second.
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Athabasca Valles and Cerberus Fossae are one of my interesting places on Mars. I'm searching for images of this rootless cinder cones in the valley.

[SigurRosFan]

Additional (2002) article:

- http://www.marstoday.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=7466 (Floods at Mars' Equator Are Recent, UA Scientists Say)

Cerebus Fossae and Athabasca Valley:

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Additional (2002) article:

- http://www.marstoday.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=7466 (Floods at Mars' Equator Are Recent, UA Scientists Say)

Did you noticed that, in the fig 1 of this article, there is a fine dark line stretching from, grossly the top left corner to the center. You need to zoom on it with a drawing software (ftp://pirlftp.lpl.arizona.edu/pub/dburr/GRL/, figure1.tiff) and you see that it goes all through the mesa untill the right bottom corner, and that other are visible, parallel to the first. Only possible explanation: tectonic faults. And recent ones. Others seems to crisscross the firsts at low angles. They could not form before the channels.


THERE ARE RECENT TECTONIC FAULTS ON MARS.

[helvick]

THERE ARE RECENT TECTONIC FAULTS ON MARS.

These look like faults alright but I assume that "tectonic faults" means large scale crustal movements and I'm not so sure that we can use that sort of description for this. Of cource the faulting might be crustal movement and that might have caused the outflow but the reverse might be true - the outflow might have led to localised faulting and might have a very different root cause.