The largest volcano on Mars may sit above a 1,000-mile magma pool. Could Olympus Mons erupt again?

[Admin]

A low-density, weak-gravity region has been found below Olympus Mons and the Tharsis volcanoes, while Mars' northern hemisphere is littered with puzzling high-gravity structures beneath the surface.

The largest volcano on Mars may sit above a 1,000-mile magma pool. Could Olympus Mons erupt again? : Read more

 

[Inmymind]

A low-density, weak-gravity region has been found below Olympus Mons and the Tharsis volcanoes, while Mars' northern hemisphere is littered with puzzling high-gravity structures beneath the surface.

The largest volcano on Mars may sit above a 1,000-mile magma pool. Could Olympus Mons erupt again? : Read more

If Olympus Mons were to erupt, how high could its volcanic plug go? Phobos and Deimos would have originally fitted snugly into magma chambers of its caldera, the heavier former now slowly falling back to Mars, and the lighter latter now moving further away.
(https://universemagazine.com/en/doo...ems-largest-volcano-caught-in-the-same-frame/)

 

[Inmymind]

If Olympus Mons were to erupt, how high could its volcanic plug go? Phobos and Deimos would have originally fitted snugly into magma chambers of its caldera, the heavier former now slowly falling back to Mars, and the lighter latter now moving further away.
(https://universemagazine.com/en/doo...ems-largest-volcano-caught-in-the-same-frame/)

(I provided the link solely for the image showing scale and position. If Phobos and Deimos were volcanic plugs that might better explain the grooves with semi-circular hollows imo..)

 

[billslugg]

It is not possible to put into orbit any satellite launched from the planet using a single impulse. There must be at least two, one to get you up there and one to get it to orbital velocity. Combining the two vectors in a surface launch won't work. A tenet of orbital mechanics is the satellite always returns to the same spot in space. In the case of a satellite shot into orbit from the ground, it would attempt to return to that spot and crash into
Mars. Another way to do it would be a three body interaction to circularize the orbit. It is possible but unlikely.

 

[Inmymind]

It is not possible to put into orbit any satellite launched from the planet using a single impulse. There must be at least two, one to get you up there and one to get it to orbital velocity. Combining the two vectors in a surface launch won't work. A tenet of orbital mechanics is the satellite always returns to the same spot in space. In the case of a satellite shot into orbit from the ground, it would attempt to return to that spot and crash into
Mars. Another way to do it would be a three body interaction to circularize the orbit. It is possible but unlikely.

Thanks Bill, but does that apply to non-circular orbits? Phobos is predicted to crash into Mars because its orbit is more spiral than circular, (and Deimos to carry on drifting away).

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

Interesting finds, Let's hope they get their gravitational mapper!

Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, with any eruptions tending to flow easily long distances.

Active shield volcanoes experience near-continuous eruptive activity over extremely long periods of time, resulting in the gradual build-up of edifices that can reach extremely large dimensions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield_volcano

The origins of Phobos and Deimos are open questions, though their equatorial orbits hint at early impact moon formation as our own Moon had.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Thanks Bill, but does that apply to non-circular orbits? Phobos is predicted to crash into Mars because its orbit is more spiral than circular, (and Deimos to carry on drifting away).

Answering for Bill, yes, it applies to elliptical orbits, too.

Think of it this way - draw a circle for the planet's surface. Pick a spot on the circle and draw any ellipse passing through that spot, with one of the ellipse's foci at the center of the circle. Part of that ellipse will be inside the circle. So, an elliptical orbit that has some part of it on or under the ground will be a crash orbit.

To get something off the surface and into a non-crashing orbit, we use rockets that fire for multiple minutes, first pushing mostly upward, but turning to the side and pushing more parallel to the Earth's surface once they get high enough to be mostly out of the atmosphere, so that there is little drag against fast flight.

Trying to do that with a big gun sitting on the surface (or a volcano shooting its plug skyward) won't make a satellite that can stay in orbit, because all the gun can do is put the projectile on one of those elliptical orbits that are partly underground. It would take a projectile that has its own rocket motor that could fire when the projectile reached peak altitude, so that its velocity parallel to the surface would increase enough to raise the lowest part of the elliptical orbit to some altitude above ground level, actually above atmosphere level.

"Spiral orbits" are not elliptical only because there is some force being applied that slows the satellite down (or speeds it up) in a more or less continuous manner, such as drag from a very thin atmosphere. But, there are other ways to make spirals. For instance, the Earth's Moon is spiraling (very very slowly) away from Earth because of tidal forces between the Earth and the Moon. Effectively, the tides in the ocean are working to transfer energy from Earth's rotation to the Moon's orbital velocity, increasing the Moon's altitude while slowing the Earth's rotation.

What is happening with Mar's moons I do not know. But, with 2 of them, it is a 3-body problem that can have all sorts of counter-intuitive solutions.

 

[Inmymind]

Interesting finds, Let's hope they get their gravitational mapper!

Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, with any eruptions tending to flow easily long distances.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield_volcano

The origins of Phobos and Deimos are open questions, though their equatorial orbits hint at early impact moon formation as our own Moon had.

Answering for Bill, yes, it applies to elliptical orbits, too.

Think of it this way - draw a circle for the planet's surface. Pick a spot on the circle and draw any ellipse passing through that spot, with one of the ellipse's foci at the center of the circle. Part of that ellipse will be inside the circle. So, an elliptical orbit that has some part of it on or under the ground will be a crash orbit.

To get something off the surface and into a non-crashing orbit, we use rockets that fire for multiple minutes, first pushing mostly upward, but turning to the side and pushing more parallel to the Earth's surface once they get high enough to be mostly out of the atmosphere, so that there is little drag against fast flight.

Trying to do that with a big gun sitting on the surface (or a volcano shooting its plug skyward) won't make a satellite that can stay in orbit, because all the gun can do is put the projectile on one of those elliptical orbits that are partly underground. It would take a projectile that has its own rocket motor that could fire when the projectile reached peak altitude, so that its velocity parallel to the surface would increase enough to raise the lowest part of the elliptical orbit to some altitude above ground level, actually above atmosphere level.

"Spiral orbits" are not elliptical only because there is some force being applied that slows the satellite down (or speeds it up) in a more or less continuous manner, such as drag from a very thin atmosphere. But, there are other ways to make spirals. For instance, the Earth's Moon is spiraling (very very slowly) away from Earth because of tidal forces between the Earth and the Moon. Effectively, the tides in the ocean are working to transfer energy from Earth's rotation to the Moon's orbital velocity, increasing the Moon's altitude while slowing the Earth's rotation.

What is happening with Mar's moons I do not know. But, with 2 of them, it is a 3-body problem that can have all sorts of counter-intuitive solutions.

Thanks. The orbits of Phobos and Deimos are described as nearly circular, hence my wording as spiral, rather than elliptical. If Deimos had escape speed could it achieve a spiralling orbit away from Mars? If so would there not be a threshold for Phobos to spiral back to Mars? One thing is for sure - both of those opposite spirallings are happening somehow!

 

[Unclear Engineer]

If a satellite has "escape velocity", it does not complete even one orbit around the bigger body. So, nothing that has made even one complete orbit has escape velocity.

But, that doesn't mean that it cannot get more energy from somewhere and increase its velocity until it does escape. But, last I read, Earth's moon is not projected to ever escape.

Mars having one moon spiraling in and the other spiraling out seems to me to indicate that they are interchanging energy with each other in some fashion. They do have gravitational effects on each other as they have different orbital periods.

Mars does not have the liquid ocean that the Earth has, so it does not have the strong tidal effects that oceans can create on orbiting moons. However, there are still "tides" in the rock of the planets to some degree, so that might have some smaller effect on transferring energy to a moon.

The inner moon orbits faster than Mars rotates, while the outer moon orbits a little slower than Mars rotates, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Mars which says:

"The motions of Phobos and Deimos would appear very different from that of Earth's Moon. Speedy Phobos rises in the west, sets in the east, and rises again in just eleven hours, while Deimos, being only just outside synchronous orbit, rises as expected in the east but very slowly. Despite its 30-hour orbit, it takes 2.7 days to set in the west as it slowly falls behind the rotation of Mars."

and

"Both moons are tidally locked, always presenting the same face towards Mars. Since Phobos orbits Mars faster than the planet itself rotates, tidal forces are slowly but steadily decreasing its orbital radius. At some point in the future, when it falls within the Roche limit, Phobos will be broken up by these tidal forces and either crash into Mars or form a ring.[27][28] Several strings of craters on the Martian surface, inclined further from the equator the older they are, suggest that there may have been other small moons that suffered the fate expected of Phobos, and that the Martian crust as a whole shifted between these events.[29] Deimos, on the other hand, is far enough away that its orbit is being slowly boosted instead,[30] akin to Earth's Moon."

But, it may also be the faster orbiting Phobos that is boosting the slower orbiting Deimos as it repeatedly passes below it. And that may also be slowing Phobos.

 

[billslugg]

Thanks Bill, but does that apply to non-circular orbits? Phobos is predicted to crash into Mars because its orbit is more spiral than circular, (and Deimos to carry on drifting away).

We are talking two different things. I am talking about launching a projectile from the surface of a sphere, neglecting air friction and third bodies. The only way to do it is to launch it from top of a mountain and send it exactly horizontal. In that case it could orbit in a circular orbit. At the end of each orbit it would hit the top of the mountain it was launched from. Air friction on Mars would make this short lived. A volcano would send the plug straight up and it would fall straight down.

The "spiraling Phobos" situation is where a moon is destined to continually lose energy somehow and spiral into its planet.

 

[Inmymind]

We are talking two different things. I am talking about launching a projectile from the surface of a sphere, neglecting air friction and third bodies. The only way to do it is to launch it from top of a mountain and send it exactly horizontal. In that case it could orbit in a circular orbit. At the end of each orbit it would hit the top of the mountain it was launched from. Air friction on Mars would make this short lived. A volcano would send the plug straight up and it would fall straight down.

The "spiraling Phobos" situation is where a moon is destined to continually lose energy somehow and spiral into its planet.

I found this useful (hope it's reliable) :-

https://api.www.labxchange.org/api/...e/Orbits-cbf678ae2f1144f62424e6a4c5dca427.png
Taken from

Introduction to Orbits

This text introduces the concept of an orbit, and explains the different types of orbit that an object can experience.

www.labxchange.org

("A thought experiment typically used to understand orbits is Newton’s cannonball, illustrated below. In this experiment, Newton thought about what would happen if you shoot a cannonball horizontally from the top of a tall mountain at varying speeds. We ignore air resistance and friction acting on the cannonball. When the ball is fired with a low initial speed, it won’t travel far horizontally before falling to the ground on Earth - this corresponds to the light green trajectory in the figure. The ball still feels the gravitational pull of the Earth and thus falls toward the Earth, but the ground curves away from the ball. Let’s now consider what happens if the cannon is fired at a sufficiently high speed, such that the ground curves away from the ball just as much as the ball falls. In this situation (the orange trajectory), the ball will never hit the ground.")

"This is a circular orbit. The orange line shows the special case of a circular orbit, which only occurs for a specific initial velocity of the cannonball. If the initial velocity is greater or less than this speed, but still sufficiently high not to fall to the surface, the orbits become elliptical (red and yellow paths, respectively). If we continue to increase the initial velocity at which the cannonball is fired, eventually it will have enough energy to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth. The minimum velocity sufficient for this case is called the escape velocity "

Escape velocity, I read is a scalar quantity - does that imply that it is the speed that is important and not the direction of launch? When it comes to the image, the scenario I have in mind is one where (applying back to Mars) Phobos might have been very, very slightly short of the speed required to reach the orange circular orbit, but greater than would have resulted in the yellow elliptical one, with real forces causing its slow downward spiral. Maybe for Deimos the converse of this situation might apply.

Just a few thoughts which might be well off the mark.

 

[Ed Stauffer]

When my wife first suggested that dark matter might be causing global warming I laughed
Dark matter after all should be a constant, I thought. When we began looking at the data I stopped laughing. Dark matter it seems is not a constant.
Planetary heating is increasing but dark matter is the chicken and Co2 is the egg.
Dark matter phase transitions appear to be a primary internal heater of the planets. If the solar system passes through an area of higher liquid dark matter content the planets cores would all receive more heat due to increased phase transitions thus heating the earth from the inside out. That means if we redirect part of the dark matter circulation of Venus or Earth to Mars we could warm it up. Mars also passes through streams of dark matter headed to every planet capturing slightly more of these would also help. These streams may be more like intermittent clouds going by on a windy day by the time they reach Mars orbit. Redirecting dark matter could warm Mars.
Heating of the planet from the inside out would result in :
Increased ground temperatures
Increased sea temperatures
Increased nighttime temperatures
Increased volcanic activity - Mars lava plumes 09/24
Increased earthquakes - Mars 4.2 earthquake 07/21

We are currently passing through the S1 dark Matter stream which, as it is going the opposite direction around the galaxy was described as a dark matter hurricane. From spring to fall the earth is downstream from the sun. And from July to December the earth is traveling with the S1 stream and from January to June we get our maximum ongoing dark matter exposure as we travel into the S1stream. It would be interesting to see if the upper atmosphere temperatures are lower in the spring than the fall due to more incoming dark matter. There have also been peer reviewed papers that discuss dark matter annihilation(or in my hypothesis phase transition)heating the earth from the inside, they did not mention any impact to climate change or the S1 dark matter stream.

We may also be subject to surges of dark matter which mean heat at the surface and cool in the upper atmosphere just before.
June-July 2020 Earth Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn conjunctions. This means that the earth passed through several consecutive dark matter streams
July 2020 Siberian heatwave and Antarctica temperature spike
Jan 9 2022 Venus Earth conjunction this resulted in an increase in the amount of dark matter leaving the sun and Venus
March 18 2022 Concordia Station spiked 39 C degrees due to unusual air patterns near Australia
North Pole regions hit 30C above normal
May 2022 mars crosses the dark matter stream to Saturn
May 4, 2022 a 4.7 magnitude Marsquake occurs due to tectonic activity.
March 26 2024 the Parker Solar Probe began its lap around the sun on April 4 it came out on the other side of the sun to start back towards Venus. In between it was actually inside of the Alfven Limit which is where I believe the surface of the dark matter sphere that surrounds the sun lies. This would be the equivalent of a speed boat sending a wake towards the earth.
April 11 mercury and earth are in an inferior conjunction which would also send a bit of extra dark matter in earths direction.
Mid June 2024 multiple heat waves.

Venus atmospheric temperatures from 2009-2017 also were higher after conjunctions and the atmospheric wind speeds have increased by 33% probably due to the increase in incoming dark matter.
Venus atmospheric temperatures from 2009-2017 also were higher after conjunctions
Venus atmospheric tsunami
If the dark matter spin off to the sun happens every 5 days on average and coincides with the wave facing the sun it may be proof of dark matter. During conjunctions if the tsunami is facing earth we get an extra surge of dark matter heading to the earth which also affects the time it takes for the tsunami to circle Venus. The gravity well fills up and dumps back to the sun but if it fills faster due to a conjunction it can spill toward the earth resulting in higher temperatures about 60 days later. The streams of liquid dark matter are constantly overflowing the suns dark matter sphere which extends to the Alfven radius. This distance varies dependant on how much dark matter reaches the point at which it vaporizes. (Velocity/gravity/temperature)
NASA issued a climate change warning for Mars after Mariner 9
Neptune has been heating up since 2018

 

[Unclear Engineer]

??? "Dark Matter S1 stream" googles to season 1 of a series named "Dark Matter".

So, was Ed's post composed by a badly confused AI app, or what?

Ed, how about a link to the science that shows we can detect and are passing through dark matter streams with the precision stated in your post.

 

[George²]

It is possible that the solar system is passing through a region with a slightly higher concentration of carbon. This can lead to the intensification of thermonuclear processes. Carbon can play a catalytic role.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Not seeing any way a "slightly higher concentration of carbon" in the interplanetary space of our solar system would have any effect on "thermonuclear processes", considering how long it would take to diffuse into the Sun's core where "thermonuclear processes" are actually occurring. And, even if it did that, we would be able to measure any increase in solar energy being emitted towards Earth.

 

[George²]

It is possible that the system passed through such regions some big number of years ago, when we did not yet have measurements and even civilization, and now we are witnessing the effect. By the way, we do not have a completely accurate idea of the internal dynamics of the sun and how long it would take for the effect to manifest itself.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

It is possible that the solar system is passing through a region with a slightly higher concentration of carbon. This can lead to the intensification of thermonuclear processes. Carbon can play a catalytic role.

For a scientific treatment of what interplanetary gas clouds would mean for Earth's climate, see https://phys.org/news/2024-09-climate-earth-interstellar-clouds.html

Hint: ice age

 

[Inmymind]

I'm struggling to find the connection between post #12, and onwards, with the original article "The largest volcano on Mars may sit above a 1,000-mile magma pool. Could Olympus Mons erupt again?

 

[Classical Motion]

Wouldn’t it be cold magma? Surely many IR scans have been done from orbit. One could see it in a heartbeat.

Imagine the earth stripped of atmosphere and all bio coverage. IR from orbit would show all the hot spots/faults.

 

[George²]

Yes, very much depends on the density and elemental composition, what effect it will cause. I don't know how you didn't realize that I wasn't referring to some extremely dense gas-dust cloud that could cause such an effect. I was talking about something specific and it's not what you're implying.

 

[Inmymind]

I found this useful (hope it's reliable) :-

https://api.www.labxchange.org/api/...e/Orbits-cbf678ae2f1144f62424e6a4c5dca427.png
Taken from

Introduction to Orbits

This text introduces the concept of an orbit, and explains the different types of orbit that an object can experience.

www.labxchange.org

("A thought experiment typically used to understand orbits is Newton’s cannonball, illustrated below. In this experiment, Newton thought about what would happen if you shoot a cannonball horizontally from the top of a tall mountain at varying speeds. We ignore air resistance and friction acting on the cannonball. When the ball is fired with a low initial speed, it won’t travel far horizontally before falling to the ground on Earth - this corresponds to the light green trajectory in the figure. The ball still feels the gravitational pull of the Earth and thus falls toward the Earth, but the ground curves away from the ball. Let’s now consider what happens if the cannon is fired at a sufficiently high speed, such that the ground curves away from the ball just as much as the ball falls. In this situation (the orange trajectory), the ball will never hit the ground.")

"This is a circular orbit. The orange line shows the special case of a circular orbit, which only occurs for a specific initial velocity of the cannonball. If the initial velocity is greater or less than this speed, but still sufficiently high not to fall to the surface, the orbits become elliptical (red and yellow paths, respectively). If we continue to increase the initial velocity at which the cannonball is fired, eventually it will have enough energy to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth. The minimum velocity sufficient for this case is called the escape velocity "

Escape velocity, I read is a scalar quantity - does that imply that it is the speed that is important and not the direction of launch? When it comes to the image, the scenario I have in mind is one where (applying back to Mars) Phobos might have been very, very slightly short of the speed required to reach the orange circular orbit, but greater than would have resulted in the yellow elliptical one, with real forces causing its slow downward spiral. Maybe for Deimos the converse of this situation might apply.

Just a few thoughts which might be well off the mark.

Wrt to the physics is this correct?

 

[Unclear Engineer]

The linked article and its drawings are correct.

The escape velocity is a "scalar" only in the sense that it is the same so long as it is in a direction that does not intersect with the ground. Obviously, shooting straight down at escape velocity causes a crash into the ground, while shooting straight up results in gravitational escape to free space. So, starting from the highest mountain, as in the article's figure, you would need to shoot at an angle that insures that your hyperbolic escape orbit does not hit the planet on its way by.

Your last bit about about a "slow downward spiral" orbit is incorrect. Without some sort of "drag" force to continuously remove energy/speed from a satellite, it will have an elliptical orbit, not a spiral. So, like the yellow orbit in the linked article's figure, it will dip down from its highest altitude to a low point on the opposite side of the planet, but will return to its same altitude when it gets back to the original position (cannon).

What is going on with the 2 moons of Mars requires that energy be taken away from the inner moon and energy be added to the outer moon. Tidal forces caused by the moons on Mars, plus the interactions of the two moons between themselves looks to me like the physical processes that are subtracting energy from the inner moon and adding energy to the outer moon.

 

[Ed Stauffer]

??? "Dark Matter S1 stream" googles to season 1 of a series named "Dark Matter".

So, was Ed's post composed by a badly confused AI app, or what?

Ed, how about a link to the science that shows we can detect and are passing through dark matter streams with the precision stated in your post.

The dark matter streams intersecting with the Milky Way number just under 30 if I remember correctly and precision isn’t a problem when you are talking about galactic scales with material scattered for hundreds of light years. You need to look a little further as a sci-fi tv show rates higher than an astronomical phenomenon.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Ed, you need to provide a link to your source of info about "The dark matter streams intersecting with the Milky Way number just under 30" if you want me to bother trying to discuss that with you. It is not up to me to find the material to support your statements.

 

[Ed Stauffer]

Streams of stars orbiting the Milky Way shed light on galaxy’s dark matter

Researchers have mapped a dozen of stellar groupings, or stellar streams, orbiting within the Milky Way’s halo, revealing new clues about the dark matter surrounding the galaxy.

www.space.com

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.09004