{Disarmed} Thousands of super-eruptions over 500 million years on Mars: NASA finds evidence of a volcanic macro-event on Mars

Despite the fairly well-established idea of the meteorite , it is also considered that the Deccan traps could be responsible for the mass extinction of dinosaurs and many other species due to an incredible volcanic activity that would block the arrival of solar radiation, ending and blocking much of it. of plant and animal life. Had this happened, we could have more in common with our neighbor the Red Planet because NASA has found evidence of thousands of supereruptions on Mars .

Supereruptions are very powerful explosive eruptions ( defined as IEV 8 Volcanic Explosion Index eruptions) and are produced by so-called supervolcanoes. They are the most massive eruptions known and the US space agency has found traces of what could be a very significant climate change on Mars.

500 million years of explosions

Volcanoes are by no means unique to Earth, and Venus actually has quite a few assets that we know of. In relation to Mars and its volcanic activity, a few months ago it was discovered that a great massive cloud of 1,800 kilometers that appears daily on Mars is due to the planet's atmosphere and a volcano that disturbs it.

In xiaomist.com The city where the volcanoes sleep

What NASA explains does not refer to active volcanoes, but to something more similar to the traps that we mentioned when talking about evidence from a region that would have suffered thousands of supereruptions . Some eruptions that would have occurred over a period of 500 million years, neither more nor less, about 4,000 million years ago.

Craters in Arabia Terra. Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona

The region is the area called Arabia Terra , north of Mars. NASA scientists have been investigating its topography and mineral composition, linking it to this striking event in a study published in Geophysical Research Letters .

In addition to the chemical composition of the site, having found up to seven calderas in the region supports the hypothesis, as these are large holes that remain after this type of eruption. They focused the study around the analysis of the ash and rocks originating from the surface of the area, trying to find out the pattern of distribution, which fitted with the prediction that what could have been in the area were these supereruptions.

What they highlight is that each of these massive supereruptions could have had "a significant climatic impact" that could have blocked the Sun and thus cool the atmosphere , as specified by Patrick Whelley (a NASA geologist). And the intention now is to try to find out how this phenomenon of thousands of super-eruptions concentrated in a given space and time was possible.

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As on Venus, volcanoes were already known on Mars, albeit small and in the hope that they could have supported life. Speaking of the Earth, it is known that the last supereruption occurred about 76,000 years ago in Indonesia , although we already saw that 170,000 years ago the Teide rose to its chest at the level of eruptions and caused a large tsunami in one of them.

So perhaps we have had a massive eruption event in common, although Mars would have beaten us in this case because of the virulence of the event they describe (and its duration). After all, on Earth we also have very Martian places .

Image | Jumpstory

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The news Thousands of supereruptions over 500 million years on Mars: NASA finds evidence of a volcanic macro-event on Mars was originally published in xiaomist.com by Anna Martí .