{"id":130131,"date":"2025-09-03T16:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/130131\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T16:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:43:07","slug":"it-turns-out-mars-has-a-solid-core-just-like-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/130131\/","title":{"rendered":"It turns out Mars has a solid core just like Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Scientists revealed Wednesday that Mars\u2019 innermost core<\/a> appears to be a solid hunk of metal just like Earth\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The Chinese-led research team based their findings on seismic readings from NASA\u2019s InSight lander<\/a> on Mars, which recorded more than 1,300 marsquakes before shutting down<\/a> in 2022. The spacecraft landed on a broad plain near Mars\u2019 equator in 2018.<\/p>\n

Previous studies pointed to liquid at the heart of the red planet<\/a>. The latest findings indicate the inner core, while small, is indeed solid and surrounded by molten metal \u2014 a liquid outer core.<\/p>\n

The Martian inner core extends from the planet\u2019s center out to a radius of approximately 380 miles (613 kilometers), according to the scientists whose findings appeared in the journal Nature.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely composed of iron and nickel, the same ingredients as Earth\u2019s core, but quite possibly also enriched with lighter elements like oxygen.<\/p>\n

Mars\u2019 liquid outer core is bigger, stretching from 380 miles (613 kilometers) to as much as 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) from the planet\u2019s center.<\/p>\n

Crystallization of Mars\u2019 inner core may have occurred in the past and still be occurring today, one of the lead investigators, Daoyuan Sun of the University of Science and Technology of China, said in an email. <\/p>\n

Mars\u2019 core initially would have been entirely liquid. It\u2019s unclear whether the liquid outer core contains any solid material like droplets or whether there might be \u201ca mushy zone\u201d near the boundary between the inner and outer cores, he added.<\/p>\n

For their study, Sun and his team relied primarily on 23 marsquakes recorded by InSight, all of them relatively weak. The epicenters were 740 miles to 1,465 miles (1,200 kilometers to 2,360 kilometers) away from the lander.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur results suggest that Mars has a solid inner core making up about one-fifth of the planet\u2019s radius \u2014 roughly the same proportion as Earth\u2019s inner core. However, this similarity may be just coincidental,\u201d Sun said.<\/p>\n

While praising the results, the University of Maryland\u2019s Nicholas Schmerr, who was not involved in the study, said questions regarding Mars\u2019 core are far from settled. With InSight out of action, there will be no new recordings of marsquakes to further reveal the red planet\u2019s insides, he noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of details about the exact shape of the inner core and composition of the inner and outer core of Mars that will require a network of InSight like seismometer stations to resolve,\u201d Schmerr said in an email.<\/p>\n

More detailed modeling is necessary to develop a clearer picture of how the inner core formed and \u201cwhat it reveals about the history of Mars\u2019 magnetic field,\u201d said Sun. <\/p>\n

At present, Mars lacks a magnetic field, possibly because of the slow crystallization of the planet\u2019s solid core, Schmerr added.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Scientists revealed Wednesday that Mars\u2019 innermost core appears to be a solid hunk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[1204,6626,4762,82431,6625,79,193,74],"class_list":["post-130131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-asia-pacific","tag-astronomy","tag-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration","tag-nicholas-schmerr","tag-planets","tag-science","tag-space","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}