A newly-discovered volcano on Mars
A newly-discovered volcano on Mars
A deeply eroded giant volcano, active from ancient through recent times and with possible remnants of glacier ice near its base, had been hiding near Mars’ equator in plain sight. Its discovery points to an exciting new place to search for life, and a potential destination for future robotic and hum
Not knowing enough about it, I gotta ask, how much did these mountain range sized volcanoes affect the atmosphere of Mars? I mean, were they a contributing factor in the planets loss of atmo, or was it more the lack of gravity and a magnetic bubble? Thank you for the share!
I am not a planetary scientist, but I have read a bit on the subject. My understanding is that it's almost entirely due to the lack of magnetic field. The solar wind just blasts the atmosphere away over time.
If we ever reach a high enough state of technology to terraform Mars, we will have to figure out some way to protect the atmosphere. I found this video to be a really interesting take on the subject: https://youtu.be/HpcTJW4ur54?si=P-HpbrHPjJFfAaEI
I’ve always heard that while it’s a blink of an eye geologically, a human breathable atmosphere would still take a from several thousand to a few million years to erode from low gravity and lack of magnetosphere.