There are volcanic eruptions, and then there are volcanic “super-eruptions.” NASA paints a picture of a past Mars, saying it was a hellish landscape of molten rock, gas, and ash. Scientists are investigating the history of Arabia Terra, a region in northern Mars, and have discovered that it likely hosted thousands of massive super-eruptions.
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In a statement on Wednesday, NASA described the super-explosions as "so powerful that they release oceans of dust and toxic gases into the air, blocking sunlight and changing a planet's climate for decades.".
A paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters shows evidence that Arabia Terra hosted multiple explosive volcanic eruptions over a period of 500 million years to about 4 billion years ago.
NASA said a super-eruption could blast the equivalent of 400 million Olympic-sized swimming pools of molten rock and gas. After that, the volcano then collapses into a large hole known as a caldera. We have volcanic calderas on Earth, including the massive crater caldera in Yellowstone National Park in the US.
The researchers examined seven calderas on Arabia Terra on Mars that were already suspected of being volcanic in origin. The team looked for ash that ancient eruptions would have left behind, and they found it.
Using images and data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists traced where the ash from the volcanoes would have ended up and found well-preserved layers of the material. It would have taken thousands of eruptions to deposit all the ash.
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Data on Mars' volcanic history will be of great interest to scientists as they work out the impact that super-eruptions could have had on the Red Planet's climate. There is also a question about why Arabia Terra is the only place on Mars that appears to have hosted these explosive volcanoes.
Information source: cnet.com
