This reveals how asteroid impacts shape the planet long after they happen.
Using data collected by spacecraft orbiting Mars, Horgan and collaborators looked at different wavelengths of visible and infrared light reflected from the planet’s surface to determine the minerals present in Martian sand. The team found signatures of glass all over the planet, particularly at higher latitudes.
One explanation for all that glass is volcanic eruptions, which are known to produce glass when magma mixes with water. But the most glass-rich swath of Mars — the planet’s northern plains — is conspicuously bereft of volcanoes, the researchers note. That rules out volcanic eruptions as the culprit in that location and instead suggests that far more cataclysmic events — asteroid impacts — might be involved.
That’s a plausible argument, says Steven Goderis, a geochemist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium who was not involved in the research. “Often Mars is seen as a volcanic planet. But there’s also a very strong impact component, and this is often overlooked.” When an asteroid moving at several kilometers per second slams into a rocky planet like Mars, the energy of the event melts nearby rocks and launches them skywards. That molten shrapnel fragments and produces sand grain–sized pieces that are roughly spherical. Those bits of glass — called impact spherules — eventually
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