Explosion on Mars.

[Chris Miller]

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/03/mushroom-cloud-on-mars-spotted-by-indias-orbiter/

http://i.imgur.com/KkAwMoS.jpg


All sorts of theories are being put forth by conspiracy theorists, such as a nuclear explosion, alien invasion, a secret war being fought, etc.


I'm surprised even those in the scientific community haven't realized the obvious, when it took me about five seconds. It's a simple volcanic eruption. The reason it looks the way it does is because of the lower gravity on Mars, about 1/3 that of Earth. A volcanic plume in gravity like that would blast straight up a long way, much further into the atmosphere than it would on Earth, before it finally spread out.

Plus, the gaping hole in the ground underneath it is kind of a giveaway. It's obviously happened in the past, given the crater just to the southeast. Millions of years ago, according to theory, there were oceans on the planet. This probably would've been the beginnings of a volcanic island like Hawaii under such conditions.

[Majora]

Clearly an inside job. Jet fuel can't melt martian dirt and rock! Wake up sheeple!

I mean uh, fuck yeah martian geology!

[CJC]

Yep, that's a high pressure volcanic eruption. We might see them more frequently if Mars had more atmosphere to put pressure on the crust.

Even stars have tectonic activity. It's just a part of convection heat that comes with the formation of a celestial body.
I definitely agree with Chris, though, scientists should have been able to figure out what this was right away.

[Tim]

I would love to see a closeup video of this natural phenomenon... The images looks cool enough.

[Xyvol]

It's Mars One exploding! ... oh wait, they haven't figured out how to get off the planet yet. Nevermind.

Seriously though, that's pretty cool. Not very surprising once you know what it is, any planet with a crust and molten core should be expected to have volcanic activity.
It does make me wonder now how many of those craters are from impacts, and how many are from volcanic eruptions.

We need to get a rover over there ASAP.

[rock_nog]

I may be totally talking out of my ass here, but my first guess would be more along the lines of meteor impact. If I recall, the core of Mars is dead, so I don't think it could be a volcanic eruption. I mean, from what I understand, the cores of planets are heated by two things - the pressure from the planet's gravity, and the decay of radioactive minerals in the core. Mars is much smaller than Earth, and so there is less pressure in the core to keep it hot, and the size meant it had fewer radioactive materials in the core, so they decayed more quickly (A pound of uranium will stay radioactive a lot longer than an ounce, to make an analogy).

I... could possibly be completely wrong about all of this, I'm just going off of memory here, but it was my understanding that Mars is a dead planet with no molten core so no new volcanoes. And that being the case, I'd have to go with meteor being the source of the mushroom cloud.

[Tamamo]

Not true Io although it's a moon is heated by gravitational forces pulling on it from 3 directions. But's that a bit off topic.

[SUCCESSOR]

I've looked at this a few times and I just don't see it. It just looks like surface terrain with odd lighting. There's doesn't seem to be any other pictures to get a good look.

[Xyvol]

There was a comet passing close by at the time it happened, so it could simply be an impact. Most of the articles I could find about it seem to be of the tinfoil hat variety tho, instantly jumping to the "NASA cover up of alien life" theory.

[Asuna Yuuki Nagato]

When I was working on Curiosity, I asked the driver to draw something on the surface of Mars to prove we've been there, and he said he drew a penis.