Scientists have found dozens of potential marsquakes. The biggest shock has been that the marsquake is more like a moonquake than an earthquake. They discovered that the Mars crust is more dry and broken than earlier speculations.

 

***Plat4om giveaway: Check the picture at the end for a surprise.***

 

In a press release, a Mars seismology researcher at ETH Zurich, Simon Sthler, made some clarifications. He said:

“So far, we have assumed that the crust of Mars is similar to the Earth’s. The fact that the waveform of the Marsquakes resembles the moonquakes gives us for the first time a picture of how the Martian crust is internally structured. Until now, we could only look at it from the outside.”

 

 

The study of seismic activity is how scientists piece together the history of how rocky planets form in the solar system. By studying the seismic waves scientists are able to track seismic waves move through Earth’s interior. It helped researchers calculate the size of our planet’s core.

 

Cool marsquake

The scientists now hope that reading the seismic waves on Mars will give more revelation into what’s inside the planet. Scientists say that Mars does not have tectonic plates. They think marsquakes occur as a result of the constant internal cooling process. The materials at its core cool and that causes stress to build up. This inherently cracks Mars’ crust and causes a quake.

 

It was also discovered that quakes on the moon can last way longer than Earth’s. Sometimes it goes on for longer than an hour. A seismologist on the NASA InSight team, Mark Panning said: “A moonquake builds up for minutes, then decays away for an hour or more. So it looks very different.”

 

 

“The reason moonquakes look that way is because the moon’s surface is really dry and really broken up. It’s been basically sitting there for billions of years and getting hit by meteorites,” he added. Researchers apparently expected quakes on Mars to feel more Earth-like. This is because they thought the planets had similar crusts. They thought this because Mars had a lot of water and volcanic activity.