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Planetary science

Plate tectonics on Mars?

Nature volume 399, pages 307–308 (1999)Cite this article

Two papers in Science1,2 report the first observations of martian magnetic anomalies, made with magnetometers on board the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. This discovery was completely unexpected. Some of the anomalies are large (about 1,000 nanotesla) and well resolved, and they are mainly in the older, heavily cratered southern part of the planet1.

Before the 1960s, several Earth scientists had suggested that continental drift had occurred on Earth, but most found the evidence unconvincing. What changed everyone's mind was the discovery of linear magnetic anomalies, first in the northeast Pacific, and then in all of the world's oceans. When they were discovered these anomalies were very puzzling. They are linear for long distances, but are sometimes interrupted by large faults which offset the entire pattern of anomalies by as much as 1,000 km. The anomalies themselves have characteristic profiles that can easily be recognized wherever they occur.

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Figure 1: Map of the martian magnetic field, from ref.2.

References

  1. Acuña, M. H. et al. Science 284, 790–793 (1999).

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  2. Connerney, J. E. P. et al. Science 284, 794–798 (1999).

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  3. Vine, F. J. & Matthews, D. H. Nature 199, 947–949 (1963).

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  4. Longhi, J., Knittle, E., Holloway, J. R. & Wanke, H. in Mars (eds Kieffer, H. H., Jakosky, B. M., Snyder, C. W. & Matthews, M.) 184-208 (Univ. Arizona Press, Tucson, 1992).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Bullard Laboratories, CB3 0EZ, Cambridge, UK

    Dan McKenzie

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  1. Dan McKenzie
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McKenzie, D. Plate tectonics on Mars?. Nature 399, 307–308 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/20554

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