Volcanic Eruptions tagged posts

The Grand Canyon (a) versus a Martian dendritic river system (b) (Arabia quadrangle; 12 degrees N, 43 degrees E). Slight morphologic differences between terrestrial and Martian comparisons may be attributed to the great differences in age. Scale bar is 60 km long. Credit: Google/Landsat/Copernicus (a) and Google/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona (b). Images adapted from Ramirez and Craddock (2018), Nature Geoscience

The climate of early Mars is a subject of debate. A recent study suggests that the early Martian surface may not have been dominated by ice, but instead it may have been modestly warm and prone to rain, with only small patches of ice...

This is a photomicrograph of a vesicular green shard from the Onaping Formation of the Sudbury impact basin. Credit: Paul Guyett, Trinity College Dublin

Meteorite impacts can produce more than craters on Earth – they can also spark volcanic activity that shapes its surface and climate by bringing up material from depth. An international team, led by geochemists from Trinity College Dublin studied rocks filling one of the largest preserved impact structures on the planet, located in Sudbury (Ontario, Canada). The ‘bolide’ hit Earth here 1.85 billion years ago and excavated a deep basin, which was filled with $melted target rocks and, later, with jumbled mixed rocks full of tiny volcanic fragments.

Not only are there volcanic fragments throughout the sequence of the 1...