Question Hellas Planitia Why no rebound?

[Geomartian]

If the asteroid/planetoid didn’t punch through Mars (at Hellas Planitia) then why didn’t the transient crater rebound? This hole in Mars looks to be one-way.

Why are the clouds and other phenomenon in Hellas Planitia rarely mentioned? While the same phenomenon is used to explain the difficulty of imaging the volcanic structures at the bottom of Hellas Planitia?

The clouds and fogs of Hellas Planitia make it interesting while the detailed images of Hellas Planitia’s floor make it too interesting?

 

[Catastrophe]

Interesting. What is your take n this?

 

[COLGeek]

Could a glancing blow from a sufficiently hard object create such a "blemish"? Not all impacts need be head on.

 

[Catastrophe]

Could a glancing blow from a sufficiently hard object create such a "blemish"? Not all impacts need be head on.

I don't know, but:
"Hellas Planitia is thought to have been formed during the Late Heavy Bombardment period of the Solar System, approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, when a protoplanet or large asteroid hit the surface. The altitude difference between the rim and the bottom is over 9,000 m (30,000 ft)."
. . . . . . . . . suggests hit during LHB. As you know, angled impacts commonly produce spherical craters but this is pretty deep for a glancing blow.

 

[COLGeek]

I don't know, but:
"Hellas Planitia is thought to have been formed during the Late Heavy Bombardment period of the Solar System, approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, when a protoplanet or large asteroid hit the surface. The altitude difference between the rim and the bottom is over 9,000 m (30,000 ft)."
. . . . . . . . . suggests hit during LHB. As you know, angled impacts commonly produce spherical craters but this is pretty deep for a glancing blow.

Understood. Was offering a possible explanation for Geo's question. I would assume angle of impact and shapes/hardness of colliding objects could produce varying impact results.

 

[Geomartian]

The asteroid and the target both compress creating a huge transient crater bulging into the target. At the same time mass is also being shoved outward in a circular shockwave. The asteroid stops and all of the compressed matter decompresses. This launches some material upward creating the ejecta blanket.

A standard <20-30 kms impact crater is created largely by the displacement of material, not by excavation. The circular features of large impact craters are mainly created by the rebound.

An asteroid does not stop, pull out a shovel and then excavate a hole.

If the asteroid has enough velocity it punches completely through a small planet like Mars. There is no rebound since the compressed matter was blown out of the other side of the planet.

The olivine in Pallasite meteorites may have come from the core/mantle boundary of Mars. The origin of Pallasite meteorites is not known with certainty.

 

[Catastrophe]

Geo - can you explain what you mean by this please, or give some background references?

"Why are the clouds and other phenomenon in Hellas Planitia rarely mentioned? While the same phenomenon is used to explain the difficulty of imaging the volcanic structures at the bottom of Hellas Planitia?"

 

[Catastrophe]

"Hellas is the third or fourth largest impact crater in the Solar System." Wiki

Is there any suggestion that the larger ones, or indeed any, are associated with puncturing. Frankly, I find the idea 'out of this workd'. NPI.

 

[Geomartian]

"Why are the clouds and other phenomenon in Hellas Planitia rarely mentioned? While the same phenomenon is used to explain the difficulty of imaging the volcanic structures at the bottom of Hellas Planitia?"

If Hellas Planitia is an interstellar puncture that would make it a secret. Interstellar impacts are completely missing from the scientific literature.

A secret that is interesting because of clouds or volcanic activity is a management problem for the people keeping it secret. I would assume that Hellas Planitia is rarely photographed unless a specific group has requested it. That group would keep tight control on all the data received.

If Hellas Planitia were to become the Yellowstone of Mars because of the clouds and other features that would cause a problem for the managers hiding science for other parties. People would want to photograph Hellas Planitia at frequent intervals to see if they can get an interesting photo (just like any photographer or tourist). Some photos might get clouds and some photos might get pictures of active volcanism at the bottom of Hellas Planitia. Nasa and other managers would then have to say “you can’t do that because I said so” causing their subordinates to become suspicious.

The statement of mine that you have quoted is a contradiction. Hellas Planitia is something interesting with a barbed wire fence around it saying “no trespassing”. The data about Hellas Planitia seems to be tightly controlled with very little raw information being released to the public. The papers and data that are released about Hellas Planitia are just to fill in a potentially suspicious absence rather than to explain what is actually there.

The “Clouds of Hellas Planitia Yearly Calendar” would probably give NASA managers ulcers and heart attacks.

 

[Catastrophe]

I do find this interesting. If a puncture were to take place anywhere (and I do have to admit that I find the idea quite extraordinary) then the immediate result would depend on the temperature, viscosity and, ultimately, chemical composition (silicate v metal for example). I would expect massive outflow of both mantle and core components and probably a counter effect. Result - enormous spillage over a wide area. Are there any results of increased surface metal components over a very wide area surrounding the location?

Wiki incudes 24 photos, maps or diagrams.

Cat

 

[Catastrophe]

The first five minutes research has given the following:
Source: Patrick Moore on Mars Cassell 2006
The index contains 14 references. A quick estimate suggests this places it in the top 20% of topics in the book.

Looking at Planitia (smooth plain), the following is in decreasing order of diameter in miles:
Elysium 2423
Utopia 2036
Arcadia 1879
Amazonis 1750
Acidalia 1735
Hellas 1564
Chryse 932
Isidis 769
Argyre 539

As you see,
Hellas comes out quite low down.
If the Planitia were formed were formed in the same way, would not this suggest multiple puncturing? What alternative causes would you suggest?

 

[Catastrophe]

Cambridge Photographic Atlas of the Planets

page 141
Quote
This mosaic of pictures acquired by Viking Orbiter 1 … … … does provide our best view of the 1500 km diameter Hellas Basin. Generally dust and condensate haze obscure the floor and some are undoubtedly present even on this relatively clear winter day. The contrasting albedo patterns appear to delineate major lava flows that quite probably were precipitated by the cataclysmic impact that caused the 6 km deep basin.
Quote

page 143
Quote
… … … taken by Viking 2. This huge basin, 1500 km across, is at least partly covered by the snows of the southern polar cap but there is also evidence of haze, both condensate and dust, which has to date prevented a clear view of the surface there.
Quote

 

[Geomartian]

The information you found is interesting. My searches were trying to find information from government publications and funding. That limited my information to the official narrative. Anyone using their own eyes will see geologically young surfaces on Mars using the released images.

Ditto for the Moon. Nasa can’t walk away from the dates they gave for the Moon rocks.

I am not going to hold my breath for the first papers connecting interstellar impacts directly to Large Igneous Provinces like those found on Northern Mars.

 

[dfjchem721]

"Hellas is the third or fourth largest impact crater in the Solar System." Wiki

Is there any suggestion that the larger ones, or indeed any, are associated with puncturing. Frankly, I find the idea 'out of this workd'. NPI.

Back when we were discussing the possibility of life on Mars, I recall reading that recent spacecraft missions have determined that the crust is ca. 50 km thick, and has never been punctured (assuming that is what you meant).

I suspect that means the data reveals a global "uniformity" in the crust, ruling out a major impactor after its final (and current) large-scale structural features were formed.

One imagines that a puncturing sized impactor would have to be of substantial size. It is expected that some expert could model this. Of course impact angle and velocity must be considered as well.


* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars

 

[Geomartian]

Puncture would be more like blasting a hole through the crust.

Hellas Planitia appears to be unique (at this time). An interstellar asteroid usually creates an area of liquid rock on the surface rather than a deep crater like Hellas Planitia. The pressure (detonation chamber) that should have filled in Hellas Planitia with molten rock ruptured on the other end of the interstellar asteroids path through Mars. That path’s end point being somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars.

The spacecraft do capture usable data about the thickness of the crust (or at least its density or effects on spacecraft orbits). Then Houston takes that data and produces a product which is a new improved fiction. People can get a lot of correct information printed about Mars in obscure or self published papers. But all of the major journals with stick to the same narrative about Mars. This is not conservative science, it is corruption.

In a court of law, the major journals will be the only experts recognized by the courts. It is who you know not what you know (as a form of government and as a secret scientific monopoly).

Logic has no armies (as yet) so how can it stop the powerful who always get what they want? Science is power and the powerful recognized that over a century ago. Nerds are the face of the most fascist power on Earth (how is that for camouflage?).

 

[Catastrophe]

Now you are getting me more than a little confused. You posted:
"on the other end of the interstellar asteroids path through Mars. That path’s end point being somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars."

Now I have understood that you are postulating that this object entered Mars, punctured the planet and continued out the other side. Is this not the case?

The above seems to suggest that the object got most of the way through (95%?) but stopped short of exit. What is the actual proposition please?

Cat

 

[dfjchem721]

If the asteroid/planetoid didn’t punch through Mars (at Hellas Planitia) then why didn’t the transient crater rebound? This hole in Mars looks to be one-way.

It would seem that the absence of rebound, which usually refers to the formation of a central peak in a crater, is the reason for the suggestion the impactor deeply penetrated the planet, or may have even exited it. Without further reference, I suspect that the size of the impact eliminated any chance of a "rebound peak".

Once the asteroid struck, it formed a large, deep pool of a molten mix of asteroid and Martian crust. The rapid "infill" of material into the deep impact zone, which often causes a rebound peak, should have occurred like most impact craters, but the size of the impact was too large. Any rebound infill would likely cause a rising up of molten rock but, being molten, it would then settle back into the "sea" that formed on impact. No central peak could solidify under these conditions, so no rebound.

It is puzzling why this is refereed to as an interstellar impactor. Considering this likely happened during a period of intense bombardment with all the inner planets, one is compelled to wonder if all those other massive impact features are from interstellar space too, or just this one? The absence of a rebound is not evidence for an interstellar event, but one that was rather common during the L.H.B.

 

[Geomartian]

It is a problem of kinetic energy conversion.

Any mass striking at a high velocity (say more than 50 kms or 50,000 meters per second) will become a super dense plasma. It has completely vaporized yet its density (weight per volume) may be as much as 2-5 times denser than ordinary matter (atoms are really mostly space). This state is partially equivalent to an atom bomb a few microseconds after detonation.

Once it transforms to a high temperature, high density plasma, it is essentially a big bomb moving through Mars.

Mars is a small planet and this interstellar asteroid’s path appears to be shallow (it did not go through the center).

There are two scenarios with the limited data available.

One the plasma bomb did not completely pass through the planet before it detonated. The pressure can only be contained while the plasma is still moving fast enough. Just before it was to pass out of the planet it began to rapidly expand blowing out a huge amount of material and melting nearly half the planet’s surface.



The second scenario produces asteroids that are in high orbits to the elliptic or planetary plane. The impact vector (moving up from below Mars) and Mars’ motion vector add together and you have high angle asteroids out beyond the orbit of Mars. Pallasite meteorites may be part of the metallic core of Mars.

As before the interstellar asteroid impacts Mars and converts to a dense plasma. Except this time the path of the plasma hits the edge of Mars’ metallic core. It shoves the core to the side fracturing Mars’ crust in huge blocks creating the Tharsis Bulge. It shoves parts of Mars’ core ahead of it exiting the other side (Northern Side) of the planet. Again, it detonates but it has also blown part of Mars (including part of the core) into a spray of molten and vaporized material. This sprayed material later condenses (or consolidates) and forms several different asteroid families having different high orbital angles.



At no time does any part of the interstellar asteroid survive, it gets mixed in and diluted within Martian material.

 

[Geomartian]

The big red blotch is the Tharsis Bulge and the blue blotch 80 east and in the south is Hellas Planitia. The northern hemisphere has been recently buried (200mya?) in molten rock so it has few impact craters. Houston, Nature etal. all say that this terrain is over a billion years old to hide the process (interstellar asteroid impact) which created it.

 

[dfjchem721]

Any mass striking at a high velocity (say more than 50 kms or 50,000 meters per second) will become a super dense plasma.

Once it transforms to a high temperature, high density plasma, it is essentially a big bomb moving through Mars.

In physics, a plasma is a high temperature ionized gas. It is composed of one or more ionized elements and electrons - i.e. free atoms and electrons, "floating" in space! By simple logic, a gas is less dense than the solid it came from, regardless of temperature.

Moreover, a plasma requires a continuous input of energy to be maintained. It is not likely that a plasma of gas from the impact event ate its way into Mars. It simply would not have the energy to maintain any plasma, much less result in a detonation inside of Mars.

 

[Catastrophe]

And there speaks the educated voice of sweet reason.

Nice one dfj

 

[Geomartian]

There are two concurrent processes going on when a very high speed (>50kms) impact occurs. One is the compression of both the asteroid and the compression of the target. At these velocities the interstellar asteroid is compressed 2-5 times its normal density and its temperature will rapidly rise to over 50,000 (conservatively) degrees centigrade. I am pretty sure that describes a dense plasma that you might find deep inside a Star.

Here hold some in your hand and check it out 😊.

At that temperature almost anything is fairly conductive.

As the asteroid slows down it can only do so by converting kinetic energy (the energy of motion) to some other form of energy such a heat. It is also transferring heat to Martian Rock.

As more of its velocity is converted to heat the increasing asteroid plasma pressure (and volume) begins expanding into the solid rock that it is moving through.



If we assume that the impactor at Hellas Planitia were bigger and faster than normal say about 20km in diameter, made of stone (2.67g cm) and moving at 500,000 meters per second (500kms) we start to see why Mars was nearly destroyed.

This generates 3.3 e11 megatons of energy. 1.6 million times the human nuclear arsenal.

Multiply the human nuclear arsenal by 1.6 million and then place those bombs anywhere you want on Mars and then set them off simultaneously. I bet it leaves a mark.

As the asteroid moves through Mars it doesn’t slow down enough to stop when it exits. It might only be traveling 20 kms when it exits. It has expanded as it passed through the planet and decompresses (detonates) when it leaves the confining rock walls of the planet. Assuming that 10 % of its energy is expended when it decompresses that produces a blast of 30 billion megatons of energy.

Obviously, the predicted size and velocity of my interstellar asteroid is a bit off since Mars would not still be there.

Interstellar asteroids can punch through planets, they can also obliterate them.

 

[Geomartian]

And there speaks the educated voice of sweet reason.

Nice one dfj

I hope you didn't pay too much for your education

 

[dfjchem721]

There are two concurrent processes going on when a very high speed (>50kms) impact occurs. One is the compression of both the asteroid and the compression of the target. At these velocities the interstellar asteroid is compressed 2-5 times its normal density and its temperature will rapidly rise to over 50,000 (conservatively) degrees centigrade. I am pretty sure that describes a dense plasma that you might find deep inside a Star.

As the asteroid moves through Mars it doesn’t slow down enough to stop when it exits.

Interstellar asteroids can punch through planets, they can also obliterate them.

Small stars fusing hydrogen have core temperatures in the millions K. The sun, a yellow dwarf, has a core temperature of about 15 million K.

Your notion that the inside of a star and your plasma are at 50,000 C is not compatible with established astrophysics. And no such "plasma" could form by mechanical impacts such as these. A large impactor might reach 10,000 C, at best. Most impacts on earth do not exceed 2500 C.

One of your last posts suggested that the asteroid plasma would explode inside Mars, now you appear to have it exiting again. Is your hypothesis evolving, or are there two of you playing naughty games with us?!

Finally, where is the evidence for an interstellar source for the impactor?



BTW, my education was free - it was paid for by the schools I went to. Sort of like a sports jock, only a bookworm type.

 

[Catastrophe]

And here is the nail in the coffin: the Roche Limit.