Giant impacts on early Mars and the cessation of the Martian dynamo

Details Giant impacts on early Mars and the cessation of the Martian dynamo Giant impacts on early Mars and the cessation of the Martian dynamo

Apr 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009eguga..11.1692r&link_type=abstract

"EGU General Assembly 2009, held 19-24 April, 2009 in Vienna, Austria http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2009, p.1692"

Physics

Scientific paper

Although Mars currently has no global dynamo-driven magnetic field, widespread crustal magnetization provides strong evidence that such a field existed in the past. The absence of magnetization in the younger large Noachian basins suggest that a dynamo operated early in Martian history, but stopped in the mid-Noachian. Within a 100 Ma period, 15 giant impacts occurred coincident with the disappearance of the global magnetic field (Lillis et al., GRL 2008). Here we investigate a possible causal link between the giant impacts during the early and mid-Noachian and the cessation of the Martian dynamo at about the same time. Using 3D spherical mantle convection models, we find that impact heating associated with the largest basins (D > 2500 km) can cause the global heat flow at the core-mantle boundary to decrease significantly (10-40%). We suggest that such a reduction in core heat flow may have to the cessation of the Martian dynamo.

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