Listening to meteorites hitting Mars will tell us what’s inside

Planets are just like people: what they reveal on the outside can help you read what’s going on inside. Space rocks bombarding Mars’s surface could soon be telling us about seismic activity deeper down.

Sometime in the past, the Red Planet had a global magnetic field and active volcanoes, and it may also have had plate tectonics and underground tremors called marsquakes. On Earth, such phenomena are linked to the planet’s molten iron core and movement in the mantle, both of which Mars might still have.

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Yes it well.

In the past I have been extremely pissed off that none of the landers on Mars since Viking has contained a seismometer. Viking’s seismometer was located above the ground and was not very accurate, so it only recorded a couple of seismic events of dubious value before going dead. It’s real value was that it proved that Mars is not anywhere near as seismically active as Earth.

mollwollfumble said:

Yes it well.

In the past I have been extremely pissed off that none of the landers on Mars since Viking has contained a seismometer. Viking’s seismometer was located above the ground and was not very accurate, so it only recorded a couple of seismic events of dubious value before going dead. It’s real value was that it proved that Mars is not anywhere near as seismically active as Earth.

Which should point to the fact that it isn’t renewing it’s topsoil.