Chaotic terrain

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Conamara chaos on Europe

In astrogeology, chaotic terrain is a planetary surface that has ridges , cracks and surfaces that are thrown on top of one another and connected to one another . Chaotic terrain is a notable part of the planets Mars and Mercury , Jupiter's moon Europa, and the dwarf planet Pluto .

In scientific nomenclature , chaos is used as part of nouns such as B. at Aureum Chaos on Mars.

causes

Europe

So far, the specific causes for the formation are not properly understood, various possible explanations have been presented:

  • In 2004, meteorite impacts with subsequent penetration into an expandable and / or liquid planetary crust were proposed.
  • In November 2011, a team from the University of Texas at Nature presented evidence suggesting that most of the chaotic structures lay over large lakes of liquid water . These lakes would be completely enclosed by the outer ice cover of the moon and would be different from the ocean below, insofar as it exists; to confirm this theory, a probe would have to examine the ice cover on Europe either with radar or as a cryobot .

Mars

Because by counting craters determine the age of leaves (the more craters a region has, the older it is), scientists have concluded is that the chaotic regions on Mars before about 2.0 to 3.8 billion years ago formed to have. In several areas on Mars, it appears that the regions formed suddenly, although the process must have taken longer.

Most of the areas will have been created by leaks in large quantities. Parts of these areas have not completely collapsed and could still contain water ice in the plateaus today . The remaining plains could have collapsed when the water flowed out. The water ice may have come from the sediment that ran under the ocean into large canyons . As soon as the ocean was gone, the sediments froze. Later, hot magma melted the ice, which then formed underground river systems. Later, these systems approached the surface and caused the cracks or the like that can be seen today.

The first theories about the origin of water created the basis of images Viking - orbiter . It was assumed that these are outflows from a global aquifer that was fed by the South Pole.

Trivia

  • In the graphic novel Watchmen, the figure of Dr. Manhattan investigates alternative perspectives on its existence, and suspects that Mars chose against life and in favor of chaotic terrain.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Roy Britt, " Chaos on Mars ," Space.com
  2. ↑ Ong, Lissa. "Evidence that chaos terrain on Jupiter's moon Europa is formed by crust-penetrating impacts" , Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, Vol. 36, No. 5, p. 144
  3. ↑ Schmidt, Britney; Blankenship, Don; Patterson, Wes; Schenk, Paul: Active formation of 'chaos terrain' over shallow subsurface water on Europa . In: Nature . 479, November 24, 2011, pp. 502-505. bibcode : 2011Natur.479..502S . doi : 10.1038 / nature10608 . PMID 22089135 .
  4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / themis.asu.edu
  5. ↑ Unraveling the Chaos of Aram | Mars Odyssey Mission THEMIS. In: themis.asu.edu. Retrieved July 14, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Baker, V. et al. 1991. Ancient oceans, ice sheets and the hydrological cycle on Mars. Nature 352, 589-594.
  7. ↑ Head, J., et al. 1999. Possible Ancient Oceans on Mars: Evidence from Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter Data. Science 286, 2134-2137.
  8. ^ Carr, M., J. Head. 2003. Oceans on Mars: An assessment of the observational evidence and possible fate. J. Geophys. Res. 108, 5042.
  9. ↑ Kreslavsky, M., J. Head. 2002. Fate of outflow channel effluent in the northern lowlands of Mars: The Vastitas Borealis Formation as a sublimation residue from frozen ponded bodies of water. J. Geophys. Res. 107,521.
  10. ^ Regional, Not Global, Processes Led to Huge Martian Floods - SpaceRef. In: spaceref.com. Retrieved July 14, 2016 .
  11. ↑ J. Alexis P. Rodriguez, Jeffrey S. Kargel, Victor R. Baker, Virginia C. Gulick, Daniel C. Berman: Martian outflow channels: How did their source aquifers form, and why did they drain so rapidly? In: Scientific Reports . tape 5 , September 8, 2015, ISSN  2045-2322 , doi : 10.1038 / srep13404 , PMID 26346067 , PMC 4562069 (free full text) - ( nature.com [accessed July 14, 2016]).
  12. ↑ Rodriguez, J., J. Kargel, V. Baker, V. Gulick, D. Berman, A. Fairén, R. Linares, M. Zarroca, J. Yan, H. Miyamoto, N. Glines. 2015. Martian outflow channels: How did their source aquifers form, and why did they drain so rapidly? Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 13404. doi : 10.1038 / srep13404
  13. ↑ Clifford, p. 1993. A model for the hydrologic and climatic behavior of water on Mars. Jour. of Geophys. Res 98, 10973-11016.
  14. ↑ Clifford, SM & Parker, TJ The evolution of the martian hydrosphere: Implications for the fate of a primordial ocean and the current state of the northern plains. Icarus 154: 40-79 (2001).