Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Dec 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agufm.p51b0362c&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2002, abstract #P51B-0362
Mathematics
Logic
1860 Runoff And Streamflow, 6220 Jupiter, 6225 Mars
Scientific paper
The enormous outflow channels of Chryse Planitia provide the best evidence that large amounts of water were once released onto the martian surface. The role of water has recently been challenged by the White Mars hypothesis, which claims that the channels were cut by CO2 gas-supported debris flows that also resurfaced the northern plains. Hoffman [Icarus, 2000] refers to a volumetric "misfit" between outburst channels and the chaos source zones. He explains that chaos collapse "...involves regolith alone which generates its own fluids from liquid CO2 and CO2-bearing ices within its own volume." Hoffman [LPSC 32, #1257] argues that release of liquid CO2 produced Aromatum Chaos, and a hypothetical energetic "jet" of gas and debris carved Ravi Vallis. He notes that water would have had to be locally recharged in many episodes to provide enough discharge to form the chaos and channel. However, these assertions appear incorrect because the fluid source was a distant surface impoundment, not local recharge. Carr [Water on Mars, 1996] describes a 400-km-long zone of subsidence that extends northward from Ganges Chasma to the source of Shalbatana Vallis. MOLA data reveal that this subsidence also extends eastward to Aromatum Chaos, the source of Ravi Vallis. The field relations show that a liquid-filled impoundment in Ganges Chasma drained northward via subterranean flowpaths to maintain surface flows in Shalbatana and Ravi Valles. The fact that the flows began at a surface impoundment virtually eliminates liquid CO2 as the flowing agent. Liquid CO2 would not be stable at the surface unless the atmospheric pressure exceeded 5 atm. A recent study by Stewart and Nimmo [JGR, in press] suggests that CO2 in liquid, solid, or clathrate form could not be preserved within the crust over geologic time. Liquid water is much closer to its stability field even on present-day Mars. Large outflow channels, such as Kasei and Tiu-Simud Valles, likely formed through the release of floodwaters dammed by ice and debris, analogous to the scabland flooding of eastern Washington. The water sources were probably ice-covered impoundments in ancestral Valles Marineris canyons. Subice volcanism was a possible source of heat to create liquid water. The former existence of transient water bodies near the surface can help to calibrate models of a volcanic-hydrologic climax during the Hesperian.
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