Its essence is not like ours

For four and a half years, the InSight probe (Inland exploration using seismic investigations, geodesy, and heat transport) from NASA Measure the seismic activity of Mars from its surface. Thanks to the data provided by this probe, a team of researchers I was able to outline a geological model This shows us what is the core of the red planet.

Cast iron core. New calculations in the geology of Mars have shown us a somewhat different planetary core than experts expected. The core will be denser and smaller in radius Between 1780 and 1810 km. It will also consist of cast iron and a host of other elements, including sulfur.

“Instead of being just a ball of iron [el núcleo] It also contains a large amount of sulfur, as well as other elements, including a small amount of hydrogen. ” explained in a press release Jessica Irving, member of the research team responsible for the discovery. Other trace elements detected by the team include oxygen and carbon.

This means that the core of our neighboring planet does not have such a structure as our interior. If the core of Mars is completely liquid, then our core is made up of two parts, the liquid outer part and the solid inner part. This was only the inner structure of the Earth’s core I discovered a few months ago, which is that the task of understanding what is thousands of kilometers inside a planet is a very difficult task. Even on our own.

magnetic field puzzle. Although the task is complex, it is important. Unlike our planet, Mars does not have a magnetic field. We know in our case that it is related to the metal inside our planet.

Although we know that Mars does not have a magnetic field, experts believe that it is very likely that it did have a magnetic field at that time thanks to some traces it left on the surface of the planet.

This was the magnetic field crucial to evolution of life on our planet. Understanding how, why, and when it disappeared from Mars will open the way for us to understand how habitable our neighboring planet was in the past, and when and why that stopped.

Two main events. The investigation is primarily based on two geological events on Mars, both of which occurred in the opposite hemisphere of the InSight probe’s location. It is about a Martian earthquake and a meteorite impact on the surface of the Red Planet.

The probe managed to pick up seismic waves resulting from the two events. To reach the probe, these waves had to pass through the planet’s core. This is what researchers used to create this new model of the interior of Mars, a methodology very similar to the methodology that has served geologists for more than a century in mapping our planet’s interior structure.

said Irving, who leads the signers of the agreement condition Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Where the work is reported. The signatories, including the CSIC Geosciences Barcelona research center, are also represented.

The task has been pared down perfectly. This investigation had a certain dose of luck when it came to capturing the two great events that benefited them. The mission was scheduled to operate for two years (which is roughly equivalent to a Sol year), but investigation conditions allowed the mission to be extended until the end of last year.

All this despite the fact that the accumulation of Martian dust has greatly complicated its mission by making it difficult for sunlight to reach its plates. This research would not have been possible without the mission extension, which can serve as a valuable reminder that even the most ancient compounds can make for great discoveries.

In Xataka | “We are destroying the information stored there for 4,000 million years”: the problem of geologists, magnets and meteorites

Image | NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland