Ancient Mars was rocked by violent volcanic eruptions that altered the climate.

A new study has found that volcanic super-eruptions routinely tore the surface of Mars billions of years ago, altering the planet's climate for decades and creating scars that are still visible today.

A team of American geologists has found evidence that the large craters visible on satellite images of the northernArabianEarth region of Mars were not created by asteroids but by massive volcanic eruptions that could explode from billion tons of gas and molten rock in the atmosphere.

Better known as calderas, these craters are essentially the remnants of once-powerful explosive supervolcanoes and have more irregular shapes than their asteroid counterparts. But since these powerful eruptions are said to have occurred around 4 billion years ago, finding conclusive evidence of their nature has required forensic methods instead.

Scientists looked for traces of volcanic ash and modeled how it would spread after such eruptions and where it would settle. They then looked at the high-resolution images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to see if the models met their expectations.

“At that point, we said, 'OK, well, these are minerals associated with weathered volcanic ash, which has already been documented. So would expect to see supereruptions, ”study-author Alexandra Matiella Novak, a volcanologist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., said in a statement. The new research builds on previous studies by Matiella Novak of volcanic ash deposits elsewhere in March.

What they found in the photos was consistent with the models. The ashes spread downwind to the east of the seven calderas revealed in the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images. The deposited ash was traceable thousands of miles from the craters, thickening further from the source.

“Let's see what was predicted, and this was the most exciting moment for me,” said study co-author Jacob Richardson, a geologist at NASA's Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in the communication.

The supervolcanoes, probably active for a period of 500 million years around 4 billion years ago, spat out enormous amounts of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of Mars, unbalancing the planet's climate for decades.

"Each of these eruptions would have had a significant climate impact -perhaps the gas released made the atmosphere denser or blocked the sun and cooled the atmosphere," said the study's lead author, Patrick Whelley, NASA Goddard geologist. . "Martian climate modelers will have work to do in trying to understand the impact of volcanoes."

The last supe

rvolcano outbreak on Earth occurred 76,000 years ago in Sumatra, Indonesia. But the terrestrial calderas, tens of kilometers wide, are spread worldwide in tectonically active regions, where most of the smaller but still active volcanoes also reside.

However, wh

at is strange about Mars Arabia Terra is that it shows no trace of small volcanoes.

Scientists believe that Earth's calderas have eroded over billions of years or have moved across the world as continents change. The scientist said that these explosive volcanoes could also exist in areas of Jupiter's moon Io, or they could have been clustered on Venus.

Scientists at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, found evidence that Mars may still be volcanic today. However, most of the volcanic activity on the Red Planet took place during the days of the supervolcanoes, around four billion years ago. Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system, had erupted approximately 25 million years ago.

The study was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in July 2021.