According to a research conducted by Joseph R. Michalski of the Planetary Science Institute and Jacob E. Bleacher of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center just published in the journal “Nature”, a crater on Mars wasn’t created by an impact but is what remains of an ancient supervolcano.

This research focused on a geologically ancient region of Mars called Arabia Terra. It’s full of craters that, however, don’t have the typical characteristics caused by impacts with other celestial bodies. In particular, an area of that region called Eden Patera was mapped using data from several space probes used over the years to study Mars.

Eden Patera is an irregular crater, a depression about 1.8 km (a little more than 1,1 miles) deep, 85 km (almost 53 miles) long and about 55 km (a little more than 34 miles) wide. It doesn’t look like a volcano, not even a Martian one. Its characteristics are much more similar to those of supervolcanoes, capable of ejecting amount of material much larger than those of the normal volcanoes. The violence of their eruptions is such that the caldera, which is the underground magma storage, collapses forming a crater instead of the mountain typical of volcanoes.

According to this research, in the depression of Eden Patera there are three calderas along with possible traces of a lake of solidified lava and a volcanic vent from which lava could get out. An alternative explanation is that underground ice melted and formed a depression but it’s unlikely that ice can create such a huge geological feature.

The presence of supervolcanoes on Mars would be important for the influence they may have had on the evolution of the planet. On Earth, there are traces of eruptions of supervolcanoes that had a profound influence on the geology of whole continents and the climate of the whole world. A supervolcano such as the one of Eden Patera could have erupted a quantity of ashes sufficient to cover the entire surface of Mars.

If their nature is confirmed, the volcanoes of Arabia Terra probably erupted with great violence during the first billion years of Mars life and then ceased their activity. It’s possible that the magma was more liquid or that it moved up the Martian crust more quickly but at the moment it’s only a hypothesis.

This research was received with interest but also with caution. It’s not easy to carry out the necessary checks on another planet, therefore, studies on the craters of Arabia Terra will probably continue for quite some time. Those are research that can help better understand the history of Mars and in general the mechanisms of evolution of a planet, therefore be useful also to study the Earth.

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