Baffling Mars crater mystery deepens
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft has just captured a high definition snap of the mysterious Orcus Patera crater, originally discovered in 1965 by the Mariner 4 spacecraft. Excited? You should be, it’s mothership-shaped!
Spoilsport scientists have several altogether much more reasonable explanations based on the new images however, which go some way towards shedding light on the curiously oblong-shaped crater that has puzzled astronomers for decades.
Located near Mars’s equator, between the volcanoes Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons, the Orcus Patera is 236 miles long, meaning that it would stretch from New York to Boston if it was on Earth. Its rim is seriously high, rising over a mile above the surrounding plains, and its valley lies a staggering 1,300 to 1,900 feet below. So what caused it?
Despite nestling between two volcanoes, scientists aren’t certain that Orcus Patera was formed by volcanic processes. One theory is that Orcus Patera is merely a large impact crater that was originally round, but later deformed by compressional forces. Another possible cause is an oblique impact, when a small body struck the surface at a very shallow angle, gouging out a large oblong crater.
The new images show that the crater’s rim is flecked by rift-valley-like structures called graben, which are a telltale sign of active tectonic forces in the area. There are Smaller graben visible inside the crater itself, suggesting that several seismic shifts have stretched the ground over time. So it looks like the combination of a crater/mothership crashing onto the surface, followed by several millennia worth of violent teutonic/alien activity, slowly scarring and warping the crater. Yeah?
Seriously though, even the most paranoid of goggle-eyed fantasists, (the sort that are forever finding pyramids, secret bases and branches of Starbucks on the Red Planet’s surface) couldn’t fail to concede that this new image almost certainly confirms that the Orcus Patera crater was formed naturally, could they?
We can surely find out for ourselves in due course – a theme park is due to be opened in the crater by the summer of 2020 – probably…
[...] an insight into how future humans might go about colonizing currently inhospitable planets, like Mars. Seriously, evolution and space farming! What an insufferable show [...]