About the crater, I skipped a bit there to Opportunity in Endurance crater. Still same process, volatiles from basaltic volcanism.
I find it strange that given
1) the atmosphere on Venus is dominated by this process but S is recycled by the active tectonicism, and,
2) on Earth the volatiles from flood basalts and Icelandic eruptions have been modelled to change the atmosphere considerably,
that little has been done on the effect on the Martian atmosphere from events such as the Mons Olympus eruption. The atmosphere could have been thickened considerably but the eventual oxidation of the S to form sulphuric acid, followed be reaction with the surface and the lack of tectonics to recycle the S, leads to an atmosphere with no S after some time period. So I feel we are seeing with both rovers the results of the last period of major volcanism on Mars, which has nothing to do with any postulated early warm/wet period.
It is interesting to speulate on what would be the effect on surface temperatures of Mars during major eruptions? Major historical Icelandic eruptions tend to lead to global cooling on earth but Venus shows trapping of heat and runaway greenhouse heating. So which way could it go on Mars? To
date I've found no modelling on this.
Space/Science » in reply to re: Ebenezer and Clovis suggest volcanism
re: Ebenezer and Clovis suggest volcanism
The whole thread (42 posts)
- Stuff from the rovers
- re: Stuff from the rovers
- re: Stuff from the rovers
- Take a look at the APXS data for Ebenezer and Clovis.
- Wopmay
- re: Exquisitely argued
- The medium here is not calcium carbonate
- Curiouser and curiouser....
- re: Wopmay
