{"id":511896,"date":"2026-06-26T10:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/511896\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T10:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:07:11","slug":"rumbles-deep-inside-mars-hint-at-a-vast-ancient-magma-system-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/511896\/","title":{"rendered":"Rumbles Deep Inside Mars Hint at a Vast, Ancient Magma System : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

For decades, our picture of Mars<\/a> was of a dead desert world.<\/p>\n

Its magnetic field exists only in sparse patches<\/a>. Its lakes and rivers have long dried up<\/a>. Surface volcanic activity sputtered to a halt long ago. And its crust is just one whole unbroken shell \u2013 unlike Earth’s system of shifting tectonic plates.<\/p>\n

Scientists have interpreted this shell as a “stagnant lid<\/a>,” believing any deep magmatic activity would have been relatively simple and localized \u2013 very different from Earth’s vast, long-lived network of molten-rock plumbing.<\/p>\n

Now, however, seismic rumbles<\/a> recorded deep in the belly of Mars suggest otherwise.<\/p>\n

“Traditionally, complex silica-rich crust was thought to require plate tectonics and subduction-driven magmatic differentiation,” University of Bristol seismologist Tobermory Mackay-Champion, who was at the University of Oxford during the study, told ScienceAlert.<\/p>\n

“Our study suggests instead that Mars can build complex crust through long-lived transcrustal magmatic systems, where mantle-derived magma is stored, differentiated, mixed, and assimilated within the crust.<\/p>\n

“That means plate recycling is not the only route to making evolved crust on hot rocky planets.”<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n

The differences between Earth and Mars have long been used to interrogate the distinction between a world that is habitable and one that isn’t.<\/p>\n

The planetary crusts of each world have played quite a large role in those analyses.<\/p>\n

Earth has mobile tectonic plates, which in turn generate complex volcanism and continents. Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates; its volcanism should, therefore, be relatively simple.<\/p>\n

But then NASA’s InSight lander was sent to Mars to sit on the surface and monitor the interior<\/a> for signs of activity. Scientists were not sure what level of activity it might record, but the seismic monitoring station revealed a planet surprisingly alive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In just over four years, it recorded 1,319 quakes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Habitability may be achievable in a wider range of planetary settings than we once assumed.”<\/p>\n

Here’s the thing about quakes. Seismic waves change shape based on the composition of what they are traveling through. This means that they can be used to perform something like a planet-sized ultrasound to figure out what’s inside<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And Mackay-Champion and his colleagues were piqued when something in that picture didn’t quite add up.<\/p>\n

“We noticed that the seismic wave speeds in the Martian lower crust were much higher than expected for a simple crustal structure,” he explained. <\/p>\n

“That mismatch suggested that the lower crust was compositionally unusual and worth investigating in more detail.”<\/p>\n

Previous studies had identified this boundary<\/a>, but its origin remained unclear. Mackay-Champion and team asked the question: What if it marks the point at which two different rock layers meet?<\/p>\n

\"\"The InSight lander on the surface of Mars. (NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The scenario is easy to picture. In a huge, underground reservoir of magma, heavier minerals sink to the bottom, while lighter minerals rise to the top.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the denser crystals accumulate at the bottom, while the remaining melt becomes richer in silica.<\/p>\n

Using thermodynamic modeling and statistical tools, the researchers tested how seismic propagation would unfold across hundreds of different combinations of rock layers.<\/p>\n

The only scenario that consistently matched the data was an unexpectedly chunky lower layer of ultramafic rock<\/a> \u2013 rich in iron and magnesium but low in silica \u2013 and an upper layer of mafic rock<\/a> that has higher silica content.<\/p>\n

And that points to a surprisingly thick underground magma plumbing system.<\/p>\n

\"MarsAn illustration of the internal structure of Mars<\/a>. (IPGP\/David Ducros<\/a>)<\/p>\n

“Explaining a roughly 14-kilometer [8.7-mile] thick ultramafic zone at the base of the crust required a much larger magmatic system than we had initially expected,” Mackay-Champion said.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest limitations of InSight is that it was not mobile. Once it got into position in Mars’s Elysium Planitia<\/a>, that’s where it stayed. In fact, it’s still there today, inert and incommunicado since its retirement in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This means the researchers could only directly constrain the crust beneath the landing site. But they believe that the geological processes are unlikely to be unique to that location.<\/p>\n

A similar seismic boundary<\/a> has previously been identified thousands of kilometers from the InSight lander. In addition, mineral evidence from around the planet provides further support for evolved magmatism.<\/p>\n

“Taken together, these observations suggest that the crustal differentiation processes identified beneath InSight may have operated across broad regions of Mars,” Mackay-Champion said.<\/p>\n

\"MarsThree members of the research team at the University of Oxford. From left to right, Professor Mike Kendall, Doctor Tobermory Mackay-Champion, and Professor Jon Wade. (Dr. Charlie Rex\/University of Oxford<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The idea of widespread magmatic activity on Mars could also change how we think about habitability on other worlds.<\/p>\n

Earth’s tectonic system is thought to be a key ingredient in creating<\/a> and maintaining<\/a> the conditions needed for life. If Mars were able to build a complex crust through a different geological process, that assumption may need to be revisited.<\/p>\n

“Our study suggests that key processes associated with habitability \u2013 including crustal differentiation, long-lived magmatism, volatile cycling, sustained heat transfer, and the generation of chemically diverse environments \u2013 can occur without Earth-like plate tectonics,” Mackay-Champion explained.<\/p>\n

“That broadens the kinds of planets that could sustain habitable environments, including those previously dismissed based on size or their apparent lack of tectonic activity.”<\/p>\n

This doesn’t mean Mars is or even was habitable<\/a>. But it does suggest the kinds of geological processes associated with habitable worlds may be more common than once thought.<\/p>\n

“Habitability may be achievable in a wider range of planetary settings than we once assumed,” Mackay-Champion said.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

Although there is no confirmed evidence<\/a> of ongoing volcanism on the surface of Mars today, the planet may yet have surprises in store. InSight’s observations of the Martian interior suggest a mantle plume<\/a> may be surging upward beneath the Elysium Planitia.<\/p>\n

More recently, gravity observations suggest a similar plume may be active beneath the Tharsis region<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This new result suggests that, far from being a dead planet, Mars may have a powerful history of activity that runs deeper and longer than we once imagined.<\/p>\n

Related: Perseverance Finds Complex Organic Compounds in Strange Mars Rocks<\/a><\/p>\n

“The biggest change is that Mars no longer looks like a planet shaped mainly by simple basaltic volcanism and stagnant-lid cooling,” Mackay-Champion said.<\/p>\n

“The most exciting part is that it offers a universal mechanism for building evolved crust on hot rocky planets without plate tectonics and broadens the kinds of planets that could sustain habitable environments.<\/p>\n

“In that sense, Mars becomes an example of a much broader planetary process.”<\/p>\n

The research has been published in Nature Astronomy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For decades, our picture of Mars was of a dead desert world. Its magnetic field exists only in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,371,141,145],"class_list":["post-511896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-msft-content","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}