Valles Marineris - Formation

Formation

There have been many different theories about the formation of Valles Marineris that have changed over the years. Ideas in the 1970s were erosion by water or thermokarst activity, which is the melting of permafrost in glacial climes. Thermokarst activity may contribute, but erosion by water is not very likely because liquid water cannot exist in most current Martian surface conditions, which typically experience about 1% earth’s atmospheric pressure and a temperature range of 148 K (−125 °C; −193 °F) to 310 K (37 °C; 98 °F) kelvin. However, scientists agree that there was liquid water flowing on the Martian surface in the past. Valles Marineris may have been formed by flowing water at this time. Another hypothesis by McCauley in 1972 was that the canyons formed by withdrawal of subsurface magma. Around 1989 Tanaka and Golombek proposed a theory of formation by tensional fracturing. The most agreed upon theory today is that Valles Marineris was formed by rift faults like the East African Rift, later made bigger by erosion and collapsing of the rift walls.

Because Valles Marineris is thought to be a large rift valley, its formation is closely tied with the formation of the Tharsis Bulge. The Tharsis Bulge was formed from the Noachian to Late Hesperian period of Mars, in three stages. The first stage consisted of a combination of volcanism and isostatic uplift; soon, however, the volcanism loaded the crust to a point at which the crust could no longer support the added weight of Tharsis, leading to widespread graben formation in the elevated regions of Tharsis. Stage two consisted of more volcanism and a loss of isostatic equilibrium; the source regions of the volcanism no longer resided underneath Tharsis, creating a very large load. Finally, the crust failed to hold up Tharsis and radial fractures, like Valles Marineris, formed. Stage three mainly consisted of more volcanism and asteroid impacts. The crust, having already reached its failure point, just stayed in place and younger volcanoes formed. Tharsis volcanism involved very low viscosity magma, forming shield volcanoes similar to those of the Hawaiian Island chain, but, because there is minor or no current active plate tectonics on Mars, the hotspot activity led to very long histories of repeated volcanic eruptions at the same spots, creating some of the largest volcanoes in the solar system, including the biggest, Olympus Mons.