
Mars Geological Enigmas
From the Late Noachian Epoch to the Present Day
- 1st Edition - May 23, 2021
- Editors: Richard Soare, Susan Conway, Jean-Pierre Williams, Dorothy Oehler
- Language: English
- Paperback ISBN:9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 8 2 0 2 4 5 - 6
- eBook ISBN:9 7 8 - 0 - 1 2 - 8 2 0 2 4 6 - 3
Mars Geological Enigmas: From the Late Noachian Epoch to the Present Day presents outstanding questions on the geology of Mars and divergent viewpoints based on varying interp… Read more

Purchase options

Institutional subscription on ScienceDirect
Request a sales quote- Offers a transchronological view of the geological history of Mars, addressing thematic questions from a broad temporal perspective
- Discusses outstanding questions on Mars from diverging perspectives
- Includes key questions and answers, as well as a look ahead to which puzzles remain to be solved
- Cover
- Title page
- Contents
- Copyright
- Contributors
- Why Mars: a prologue
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Resolving Martian enigmas, discovering new ones: the case of Curiosity and Gale crater
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Curiosity and Gale Crater
- 3. Resolving Mt. Sharp’s origin
- 4. Additional findings
- 5. Enigmas solved … and generated
- Acknowledgment
- Node I: Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps; on ancient Mars, what fluid formed the enormous outflow channels and highland-margin contacts?
- Chapter 2: Outflow channels on Mars
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Channels on Mars
- 3. Associations between outflow channels and other Martian landforms
- 4. Chaotic terrain
- 5. Fissures
- 6. Spectrometry—geochemical evidence of aqueous environments in outflow channel source terrains
- 7. Summary and conclusions
- Chapter 3: Mars northern plains ocean
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Published tests of the shoreline hypothesis
- 3. Current observations
- 4. Discussion
- 5. Conclusions
- Chapter 4: Dry megafloods on Mars: formation of the outflow channels by voluminous effusions of low viscosity lava
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Overview of past aqueous interpretations of the outflow channels
- 3. Problems with aqueous hypotheses
- 4. The volcanic interpretation of the Martian outflow channels
- 5. Discussion
- 6. Conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- Node II: Can impact craters be used to derive reliable surface ages on Mars?
- Chapter 5: Challenges in crater chronology on Mars as reflected in Jezero crater
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Basic concepts in crater chronology
- 3. Challenges in crater chronology in Jezero crater
- 4. Discussion and conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 6: The role of secondary craters on Martian crater chronology
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Review of crater size-frequency distributions
- 3. Review of the debate over the effect of secondary craters
- 4. Constraining the flux of small primary craters
- 5. Production of secondaries by Martian primaries
- 6. Model of the global secondary SFD
- 7. Model of the spatial distribution of secondaries
- 8. Conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- Node III: The Perplexing Story of Methane on Mars
- Chapter 7: Methane on Mars: subsurface sourcing and conflicting atmospheric measurements
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Rationale for subsurface sourcing of methane
- 3. Subsurface methane origin—potential biotic and abiotic generation
- 4. Methane accumulation in the Martian subsurface
- 5. Methane release from the subsurface
- 6. Predicting locations of subsurface methane accumulation
- 7. Path forward
- 8. Remaining questions and uncertainties
- 9. Summary and conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 8: A review of the meteor shower hypothesis for methane on Mars
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Review of literature
- 3. Methods
- 4. Observations
- 5. Interpretations
- 6. Uncertainties/remaining questions
- 7. Conclusions
- 8. Final thoughts: the significance of methane on Mars
- Acknowledgments
- Node IV: Does water flow on Martian slopes?
- Chapter 9: The role of liquid water in recent surface processes on Mars
- Abstract
- 1. Present-day and recent surface conditions on Mars
- 2. Present-day reservoirs of water on Mars
- 3. What is the evidence for recent liquid water on Mars?
- 4. Synthesis and outlook
- 5. Conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 10: Dry formation of recent Martian slope features
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Challenges for liquid water
- 3. Observed slope features
- 4. Discussion and conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- Node V: Earth Analogs for Mars - a Plethora of Choice!
- Chapter 11: The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica: a geological, environmental, and ecological analog to the Martian surface and near surface
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Background: geologic and environmental context of Mars and Antarctica
- 3. Observations: Antarctic insights into Martian enigmas
- 4. Discussion
- 5. Summary and conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 12: The Atacama Desert: a window into late Mars surface habitability?
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Environmental conditions
- 3. Ecological successions along the latitudinal rainfall gradient
- 4. Expression and preservation of signatures of life
- 5. Implications for Mars habitability and the search for evidence of life
- 6. Concluding remarks and path forward
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 13: Life analog sites for Mars from early Earth: diverse habitats from the Pilbara Craton and Mount Bruce Supergroup, Western Australia
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Geological setting: the Pilbara Craton and Mount Bruce Supergroup
- 3. Investigated geological units
- 4. Inhabited environments—from sea to land
- 5. Discussion
- Acknowledgments
- Node VI: The freeze-thaw cycling of water at/near the Martian surface: present, past, and possible?
- Chapter 14: Pingo-like mounds and possible polyphase periglaciation/glaciation at/adjacent to the Moreux impact crater
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Methods
- 3. Observations
- 4. Glacial terrain and open-system pingos
- 5. Periglacial terrain and closed-system pingos
- 6. Two disparate mound-formation scenarios
- 7. Basement age-estimates and the relative geochronology of the post-basement landscapes
- 8. Discussion and conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 15: Thermokarst-like depressions on Mars: age constraints on ice degradation in Utopia Planitia
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Thermokarst-like morphologies on Mars
- 3. Age dating mantling units and thermokarst-like depressions in Utopia Planitia
- 4. Modern CO2 sublimation pits as an analog for mid-latitude thermokarst-like depressions?
- 5. Excess ice versus mantle ice?
- 6. Conclusions and open questions
- Acknowledgments
- Node VII: Hemispheres together: toward understanding the crustal dichotomy on Mars
- Chapter 16: Forging the Mars crustal dichotomy: the giant impact hypothesis
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Giant impact excavation of the northern lowlands
- 3. Alternative impact models
- 4. Timing and likelihood of a dichotomy-forming impact
- 5. Additional consequences of an early giant impact
- 6. Summary
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 17: Endogenic origin of the Martian hemispheric dichotomy
- Abstract
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Historical and geologic context
- 3. Endogenic formation methods
- 4. Hybrid formation mechanism
- 5. Orientation of the dichotomy
- 6. Summary
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- No. of pages: 554
- Language: English
- Edition: 1
- Published: May 23, 2021
- Imprint: Elsevier
- Paperback ISBN: 9780128202456
- eBook ISBN: 9780128202463
RS
Richard Soare
Richard Soare is a physical geographer specializing in periglacial (cold-climate, non-glacial landscapes). Through the last twenty years he has spent considerable time in the Canadian arctic (physically) and off-planet (intellectually), attempting to identify landscapes on Mars present or past possibly molded by the freeze-thaw cycling of water. His work spans the red planet geographically, ranging from the plains of Utopia Planitia in the northern hemisphere and the Moreux impact-crater at the Mars dichotomy through to the Argyre impact-crater in the southern hemisphere. Recently, he lead-edited “Mars Geological Enigmas: from the late Noachian Epoch to the present day” and a special issue of Icarus: “Current and Recent Landscape Evolution on Mars.”
SC
Susan Conway
JW
Jean-Pierre Williams
Jean-Pierre Williams is a planetary scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA and was a research scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for five years before accepting a position at UCLA. His work focuses on the geology and physics of the inner planets, and he has authored and co-authored over sixty peer-reviewed publications on Mars, Mercury, and the Earth’s Moon. He is currently the Deputy Principal Investigator of the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a member of the ShadowCam instrument team on the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) mission, which will image the permanently shadowed regions near the poles of the Moon, and a Co-Investigator of the Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer (Lunar-VISE), a lander and rover that will explore the summit of a volcanic dome on the Moon.
DO