Mars Still Has Liquid Rock Near its Core

Why doesn’t Mars have a magnetic field? If it did, the planet would be protected from cosmic radiation and charged particles emitted by our Sun. With a magnetic field, perhaps the Red Planet wouldn’t be the dry, waterless world it is today.

It has long been believed that Mars once had a global magnetic field like Earth does, but somehow the iron-core dynamo that generated it must have shut lanugo billions of years ago.

But new seismic data from NASA’s InSight lander might transpiration our understanding of Mar’s interior, as well as yo-yo the view of how Mars evolved and reverted over time. InSight’s data revealed the presence of a molten silicate layer overlying Mars’ metallic core. Scientists say this insulating layer is like a wrap that might prevent the cadre from producing a global magnetic field.

“The wrap not only insulates the heat coming from the cadre and prevents the cadre from cooling, but moreover concentrates radioactive elements whose waste generates heat,” said Vedran Lekic, a professor at the University of Maryland and co-author of a new paper published in Nature. “And when that happens, the cadre is likely to be unable to produce the convective motions that would create a magnetic field—which can explain why Mars currently doesn’t have an zippy magnetic field virtually it.”

Earth’s magnetic field comes from its core, where molten, electrically conducting iron flows underneath the crust. This magnetic field is global, meaning it surrounds the unshortened planet. Plane though Mars is a rocky, terrestrial planet like Earth, Mars does not generate a magnetic field on its own, outside of relatively small patches of magnetized crust.

Without the protection a magnetic field provided, Mars’ undercurrent was stripped, and eventually, any water on the surface – plane oceans – would have evaporated as water vapor in the undercurrent was lost to space, making it incapable of sustaining life.

NASA’s InSight mission deployed the first seismometer on the surface of Mars. It recorded “Marsquakes,” and it has moreover helped determine the layering and thickness of the planet’s crust, the structure of the mantle, and the size of Mars’ cadre and its composition. Data from InSight is helping planetary scientists to work out the internal structure of Mars. Lekic and his colleagues say that InSIght has now revealed, surprisingly, the molten silicate layer overlying the planet’s metallic core.

Silicates are rock-forming minerals that make up the husks and mantle of both Mars and Earth. The molten layer on Mars lies between the mantle and core. Earlier research with data from InSight revealed that the Martian cadre is molten, but this new research ways that the cadre likely smaller than previously thought. With the discovery of this molten layer, the researchers say this explains “other geophysical data and wringer of Martian meteorites,” equal to a press release from the University of Maryland.

They moreover theorize that Mars was at one time a molten ocean of magma that later crystallized to produce a layer of silicate melt enriched in iron and radioactive elements at the wiring of the Martian mantle. The heat emanating from the radioactive elements would then have dramatically unsimilar the thermal incubation and cooling history of the red planet.

“These layers, if widespread, can have pretty big consequences for the rest of the planet,” Lekic said. “Their existence can help tell us whether magnetic fields can be generated and maintained, how planets tomfool over time, and moreover how the dynamics of their interiors transpiration over time.”

The InSight lander mission officially ended in December 2022 after increasingly than four years of collecting data on Mars. InSight was part of the overall effort to understand Mars and if it was habitable in the past. By probing the planet’s interior, it has revealed some of the planet’s geological history. Another finding by InSight’s magnetometer showed that the planet’s magnetic field may have been much stronger on the surface than orbital measurements showed, which strengthens the specimen for its potential warmed-over habitability.

As this new research indicates, wringer of the spacecraft’s observations continues.

“This new discovery of a molten layer is just one example of how we protract to learn new things from the completed InSight mission,” Lekic said. “We hope that the information we’ve gathered on planetary incubation using seismic data is paving the way for future missions to godhead persons like the Moon and other planets like Venus.”