Incredible Images Show What's Inside the Biggest Canyon In the Solar System (vice.com) 11
A Mars orbiter has captured stunning pictures of the largest canyon in the solar system, called Valles Marineris. It stretches across 2,500 miles of the red planet's equator, a distance that is roughly equivalent to the diameter of the continental United States. Motherboard reports: Mars Express, a European Space Agency (ESA) mission that arrived at Mars in 2003, recently imaged the deepest reaches of this epic canyon, where its slopes descend more than four miles into the Martian surface, which is five times deeper than the Grand Canyon, according to an ESA statement. The observations reveal two massive "chasma," or trenches, that run parallel along the western portion of Valles Marineris, known as Tithonium Chasma in the south and Ius Chasma in the north. These trenches are each about 500 miles in length, making them twice as long as the Grand Canyon -- and they encompass only about a fifth of Valles Marineris' full extent.
Mars Express snapped these shots of the chasma in April with its High Resolution Stereo Camera, during its 23,123th orbit around the planet. The images are so sharp that ESA scientists used them to generate close-up perspectives of Tithonium Chasma that resemble aerial photographs. The pictures show dark dunes, huge mountains, and the fallout of landslides within the chasma, which are annotated in an accompanying map. Canyons on Earth are usually whittled out by the flow of rivers over millions of years, but scientists believe Valles Marineris was formed by tectonic activity on Mars more than three billion years ago. [...] Valles Marineris may have also hosted liquid water billions of years ago, when Mars was wetter, warmer, and potentially habitable.
Mars Express snapped these shots of the chasma in April with its High Resolution Stereo Camera, during its 23,123th orbit around the planet. The images are so sharp that ESA scientists used them to generate close-up perspectives of Tithonium Chasma that resemble aerial photographs. The pictures show dark dunes, huge mountains, and the fallout of landslides within the chasma, which are annotated in an accompanying map. Canyons on Earth are usually whittled out by the flow of rivers over millions of years, but scientists believe Valles Marineris was formed by tectonic activity on Mars more than three billion years ago. [...] Valles Marineris may have also hosted liquid water billions of years ago, when Mars was wetter, warmer, and potentially habitable.
Whatever man (Score:2)
It's not as good as the Grand Canyon here on Earth, which has fossils. Does that canyon have even one fossil?
Re: (Score:2)
It's not as good as the Grand Canyon here on Earth, which has fossils. Does that canyon have even one fossil?
Possibly?
Re:Whatever man (Score:4, Informative)
Also, while it's big in all dimensions together, it's not the leader in any.
Length: dwarfed by Baltis Vallis on Venus, a steep-sided ~6800km long "river canyon" averaging 46m deep and 2,2km across. What flowed there in the past is still unclear. Possibly carbonatites. It used to be even longer, but both ends have been obscured by more modern flows.
Depth and esp. cliff size: Miranda. It has canyons hundreds of km long and tens of kilometers wide, frequently with sheer vertical cliffs at the edges, like Verona Rupes, of up to 20km deep (12x the Grand Canyon's maximum depth). If you jumped off the edge of Verona Rupes it would take 12 minutes to reach the bottom.
That said, Valles Marineris combining great size in all dimensions, and doing that on a planet (aka, fighting against gravity), is absolutely impressive.
Diameter of the continental United States (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Imagine explaining to an American that their country has an East to West width, and it's measured in kilometres...
Re: (Score:2)
How soon... (Score:2)
So what should be the air pressure at the bottom? (Score:2)
And even better, can we get a rover down there? Maybe I should specify get a rover down there in one piece.
old news (Score:2)
i've been seeing inside the biggest canyon in the solar system for years, right here on the comment sections of /. although admittedly it doesn't come up nearly as often as it used to
Joke (Score:2)
[Insert "Yo Mamma" joke here.]